Economic Significance
Numerous international shipping lanes pass through the strait, including those carrying much of the traffic bound for the ports of southern South Korea. Both South Korea and Japan have restricted their territorial claims in the strait to 3 nautical miles (5.6 km) from shore, so as to permit free passage through it.
Passenger ferries ply numerous routes across the strait. Commercial ferries run from Busan, South Korea to Japanese ports including Fukuoka, Tsushima, Shimonoseki, and Hiroshima. Ferries also connect Tsushima Island with Fukuoka, and South Korea's Jeju Island with the Korean mainland. Ferries connecting Busan and Japanese cities with ports in China also traverse the strait.
Japan's territorial waters extend to three nautical miles (5.6 km) into the strait instead of the usual twelve, reportedly to allow nuclear-armed United States Navy warships and submarines to transit the strait without violating Japan's prohibition against nuclear weapons in its territory.
Read more about this topic: Korea Strait
Famous quotes containing the words economic and/or significance:
“The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“Politics is not an end, but a means. It is not a product, but a process. It is the art of government. Like other values it has its counterfeits. So much emphasis has been placed upon the false that the significance of the true has been obscured and politics has come to convey the meaning of crafty and cunning selfishness, instead of candid and sincere service.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)