The Hebei Spirit oil spill incident that occurred in 2007 produced large oil spill to Yellow Sea. It is estimated that approximately 10,900 tons of crude oil were released from collision between crane barge and lead tug at Taean on the west coast of the Republic of Korea1. As a result of the incident, the immense expenses concerning economic damages, natural resource damages, cleanup activities, compensation costs, and other obligations came out. And in order to receive compensation, a lot of the victims collected evidence for claiming compensation and filed a lawsuit to the court. Usually, in the oil spill incident like the Hebei Spirit oil spill incident, a lot of issues and problems are raised. For example, in regard to the ship owner’s liability for the oil spill incident, compensation proceedings of catastrophic oil spill, and calculating damages from oil spill etc. are raised. Especially, as for the limitation of ship owner, there are problems that the ship owner was negligent or not under the CLC and law when the oil spill incident occurs. And the problem that other subjects such as tug or crane barge have a liability to compensation or not is raised too. And when it comes to the compensation proceedings for oil spill incident, because IOPC Funds requires complicate documents as a proofs of damage, many victims are suffering from collecting evidence by themselves and filing a suit. In the case of the Hebei Spirit oil spill incident, many victims had difficulty in finding proofs because of lack of law regarding it and complicated requirements of IOPC Funds. In addition to this, victims from oil spill incident usually suffered from delay of ruling of court or low rate of the compensation. As for the question about psychological damage, generally it is difficult to be admitted as the damages from oil spill incident. It is because to calculate causation between the psychological damage and oil spill incident is hard. Also, in the case of the fishery without gear’s damage, to submit documents that prove victim’s damages is difficult because the victims don’t have any proofs such as work sheet or receipt usually. For these reason, the problem related calculating damages is raised. In addition, in regard to compulsory insurance, victim’s right of direct claim to insurer helps the victims from oil spill incident receive compensation. However, there is a problem about acknowledging indemnity of the third party under the law. This paper aims to review the compensation proceedings in oil spill incidents and relief victims by taking the case of Hebei Spirit oil spill incident in Korea. Especially, it reviews the law concerning oil pollution and compensation, and international convention such as CLC. And it reviews provision of applicable laws and tries to find some limitations or problems of the laws in the Hebei Spirit oil spill incident carefully. Also, in order to find the improvements about problems, this paper suggests some directions by studying the problem of law and comparing other oil spill incident cases or law of other countries. This paper is largely divided into seven parts:the Hebei Spirit oil spill incident and the Questions raised there from, limitations of liability for oil spill incident, compensation proceedings for oil spill incident, calculation of damages for oil spill incident, compulsory insurance for rescuing victims from oil spill incident, improvements of the compensation system, and conclusions.
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