Oil spill compensation

Moon Seung-il earned his living by running fishing boats for weekend anglers in Taean County along the west coast. On Dec. 7, 2007, a Samsung Heavy Industries barge struck a crude oil tanker passing there, causing the country’s worst oil spill and driving him out of business. Moon filed a claim of 13 million won ($12,280) but the International Oil Pollution Compensation Funds (IOPC) acknowledged only 80,000 won of it. He tore apart the IOPC’s notice.

On Wednesday, he received another notice, this time from a local court that estimated his damage at 430,000 won. “Have I waited for this over the past five years and one month?” he said. “I had made up to 1 million won from a day’s fishing trip.” Moon is but one of the 127,000 Taean residents at a loss for words because of the ridiculously little ― and too much delayed ― compensation.

In total, the court ruled the victims could receive compensation of 734.1 billion won, four times larger than a preliminary assessment of 182.4 billion won by IOPC, but barely one fifth of the 3.7 trillion won demanded by people affected by the disaster.

As the residents and IOPC remain unsatisfied with the court’s assessment, a string of civil lawsuits from both sides will likely follow, meaning it will still be years away when victims receive any money.

There is too wide a gulf to fill between the assessments of residents and the international body, which is due mainly to the difficulties in calculating damages suffered by the non-fishery sector, such as tourist revenue from fishing and lodging.

Out of the total 734.1 billion won, the IOPC will pay up to 329.8 billion won, the tanker carrier, Hebei Spirit, 145.8 billion won, and the government, 248.7 billion. Samsung Heavy, which started all this, has only to put in 5.6 billion won, as the company has secured a ruling on the restriction of liability.

The case may not be exactly identical, but in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, BP set up a compensation fund of $20 billion for victims. The U.S. victims, whose number coincided with Taean residents at 127,000, received emergency payments of $3,200, equal to six months’ lost income immediately, and are awaiting interim and final payments, which will come far larger and quicker.

Samsung has refused to pay 500 billion won demanded by residents. Should we just give up, thinking the two incidents are completely different ones occurring in different countries and are being handled by different governments?

Behind BP’s swift and sufficient moves was not only a keener sense of legal and ethical responsibility but also Washington’s pressure, including threats of giving no more business opportunities to the oil giant. Samsung must have heard about no such concepts or received no similar warnings from Seoul. <The Korea Times>