A lot of the ships fishing for squid off the Americas come from China, Korea, and Japan. If they're willing to cross the Pacific to feed their squid habit, you can bet they're not overlooking the resources in their own backyard. 

Squid fishing is a huge industry in Asia--and, as always, it's a bit tricky to divvy up the catch. 

I've babbled before about the tussles between Argentina and the Falkland Islands over their squid fisheries. It looks like similar issues--with a different species--are being played out halfway around the globe. Song Ji-sun reports at Arirang, edited for readability by yrs. truly:

North Korea signed a treaty with China in 2004, allowing Chinese fishing boats to fish in North Korea's East Sea waters, in exchange [for] monetary rewards. Since then, Chinese fishing boats have been sweeping squid [as they return] to South Korea's East Sea in the summer [from a spring migration to the north]. Over the same period, South Korea's squid catch [in] the East Sea has sharply reduced.
South Korean fishermen also claim that their fishing nets are often damaged by the Chinese vessels that sail over South Korea's East Sea as a shortcut to North Korean waters.

This report is coming from the South Korean port town of Jumunjin, which is apparently known as Squid Town, though its squidliness has been dwindling over the past few years.

I'm reminded of the news just a couple of months ago about Ulluengdo, an island about a hundred miles from Jumunjin. That story, as reported in the LA Times, contained no mention of losing squid catch to Chinese fishing boats; it was merely a pensive tale of a community that had overfished its resources and was consequently losing its cultural tradition of squiddery.

Here are the two locations:



The exact migration patterns of the squid in question (Todarodes pacificus) are still being actively studied. They do seem to migrate north in the spring, though their return to the south may be closer to fall or winter than summer (Choi et al. 2008).

I have to wonder: are Chinese fishing boats truly impacting the South Korean catch, or are they a convenient scapegoat for a tragedy of the commons? I certainly don't know enough about the situation to answer, though.