South Korea Could Grant Bottlenose Dolphins off Jeju Island ‘Legal Personhood’ Status to Better Protect Them

Bottlenose dolphins living off the coast of South Korea’s Jeju Island are threatened by boats, discarded fishing gear, construction noise, pollution and runoff from fish farms. But a group of the country’s environmentalists and experts are campaigning for the dolphins to be given “legal personhood” status to better protect them.

It is the first attempt by Korea to give an animal the status, and is part of an expanding movement to recognize the legal rights of nonhuman species.

“Since 2023, Jeju island’s government has been working to introduce Korea’s first-ever ‘eco legal personhood’ system to protect Jeju’s environmental and ecological values and ‘set a new standard’ for domestic ecological and environmental policies. In order to introduce the environmental personhood system, Jeju has been operating a working group composed of academics, lawyers, and experts to come up with a proposal,” a press release from Eco Jurisprudence Monitor said.

The proposed amendment to an existing law would recognize the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin as “eco-legal entities, granting them certain rights and legal protections to ensure long-term ecological sustainability.”

The amendment would also require the formation of a committee to advocate for and protect the dolphins’ rights, as well as establish funding mechanisms to support the protections.

An estimated 120 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins make their home in the waters off Jeju Island, according to a press release from Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

Many of them have visible scars from being entangled in fishing gear or from being struck by boats and jet skis that speed through the waters surrounding the island.

“Because the dolphins cannot cut the fishing lines themselves, we decided to cut them for them,” said Jeongjoon Lee, a Korean director known as “Dolphin Man,” as The Guardian reported. Lee is known for his work helping and documenting Jeju’s bottlenose dolphin population.

“In one case, we had to cut wire from two different places, one was going in through the dolphin’s face to its body, and another from around its tail where it had become tangled,” Lee said.

^{Jeongjoon Lee, known as “Dolphin Man.” Young Nam Kim / Korea Marine Environment Management Corporation}

Miyeon Kim, who works with local NGO Marine Animal Research and Conservation (MARC), said the purpose of giving the dolphins legal personhood status is for advocates to be able to take action on their behalf if a company or individual threatens their livelihood.

“The endangered Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin, which has lived harmoniously with the haenyeo (female sea divers) in Jeju waters, is an important species that requires protection,” said Governor of Jeju Oh Young-hoon in the press release from the ministry. “With supporters, the Jeju government will do its best to pass a revision to the Special Act on the Establishment of Jeju Special Self-Governing Province and the Development of the Free International City to designate Korea’s first eco-legal person.”

Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins are listed as “near threatened” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s Red List of Threatened Species, reported The Guardian. However, IUCN said lack of data on the species makes it hard to determine if the status is accurate.

Kim said one of the strategies MARC uses to protect the dolphins is to personalize them, so that local people can better relate to them. The group produced a booklet displaying a photograph of each dolphin’s dorsal fin with their name.

“It’s important for us to be able to identify individual dolphins to be able to record scientific facts but it’s also important for the islanders. People have to understand and really relate to endangered species in order for these [kinds] of things [establishing legal personhood] to work,” Kim said, as The Guardian reported.

In April, a marine protected area was designated on the west side of Jeju island to safeguard the dolphins.

Kim said current rules governing the area, like preventing arbitrary development, need to be strengthened.

“The law bans more than two recreation boats coming within a 100-metre radius of the dolphins but there are a lot of different boats in that area including fishing boats, and at the moment we can’t do anything about those,” Kim explained.

Lee has spent a lot of time with the dolphins, swimming alongside them, providing help when needed and filming them. He said additional conservation measures couldn’t come fast enough.

“Sometimes I see so many boats surrounding the dolphins all watching them and chasing them around,” Lee said. “It is good that we now have a small space to begin to protect them more, but really we need to designate that whole side of the island as a protected area in order to keep them safe for the future.”