Facing vocal opposition from a number of quarters, including domestic outcry, South Korea has abandoned plans to resume so-called scientific whaling, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society reports.
There’s not much more to say about the good news, but WDCS says Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr has said that his South Korean counterpart had told him of the decision as an East Asia summit in Cambodia. WCDS notes that Australia and the US opposed the move, with both being major security and trade partners with South Korea the plan was reconsidered.
Though commercial whaling has been banned for some time, South Korea had been considering availing itself of the same loophole that Japan uses to hunt whales.
Under the scientific whaling exemption nations are allowed to kill a quota of whales under the rubric of scientific research—though in the case of Japan, it’s been widely documented that the annual whale hunt is primarily a commercial whale hunt.