After the Sewol ferry tragedy, a marine safety system to protect passenger's lives and property on passenger ships has grown more important. Which further means that the support, including human and financial resources, for the safety operation management system has become more significant than ever before.
The revenues to run the operation management system on costal passenger ships are financed through two different sources. First one is "the charge of the operation manager expense", which is 3.2 percent of the transportation fare paid to passenger ship business owners by their passengers. The other one is the subsidies from the Korean government.
In order to secure the publicness and independence of the operating manager7s jobs, and at the same time to prevent the intervention from the business owners who are actually required to follow the guidance and inspection of the manager, the Korean government amended maritime laws on 7 July 2015. And the amendment focused on transferring the role of managing safety operation and collecting the charge for it, from KSA(Korea Shipping Association) to KST(Korea Ship Safety Technology).
Although their passengers actually pay for the cost of operation management according to "user-pays principle", business owners misconceive that they pay with their own money. Such perception leads to the growing dissatisfaction of owners with the operation management charge as well as the managers who instruct and supervise them.
Despite of the increased workload of managing vehicle cargo on the costal passenger ships, the expense of the operation manger system has been mostly charged to passengers who use general or small-size costal ships for about 42 years since the system's implementation. Such conditions have raised a fairness issue around the charge share of car-ferries (whose number has increased from 48 in 1998 to 96 in 2015). Furthermore, with the growth in the number of sea-crossing bridges in island areas, KST is expected to face difficulties in securing the stable source of its revenues, collected through safety operation management charge, and thus its financial independence.
This study points out the current paradoxical state where the burden of the operation management charge is imposed solely on the passengers, rather than vehicle cargo on board, the actual factor to deteriorate the ship's seaworthiness. This study also conducts a research on the reform of today's charge system into a more risk-based one to improve the safety and stability of vessels.
Thus, in order for operation manager system, without being restricted by the shortage of revenue, to pursue its original purpose of ensuring the safety of passenger ships, this study redesigns its charge imposing system in a direction to levy vehicle cargo customers more and average passenger less.
This study suggests establishing a rational and adequate charge imposing system in safety operation management by designing a new passenger ship safety operation management charge system.