• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.27 no.7
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• pp.1038-1043
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• 2021

Guaranteed seafarer wage payment is essential to ensure a stable supply of seafarers. However, disputes over non-payment of wages to seafarers often occur. In this study, an automatic wage payment system was designed using a blockchain-based smart contract to resolve the problem of seafarers' wage arrears. The designed system consists of an information register, a matching processing unit, a review rating management unit, and wage remittance before deploying smart contracts. The matching process was designed to send an automatic notification to seafarers and shipowners if the sum of the weight of the four variables, namely wages, ship type/fishery, position, and license, exceeded a pre-defined threshold. In addition, a review rating management system, based on a combination of mean and median, was presented to serve as a medium to mutually fulfill the normal working conditions. The smart contract automatically fulfills the labor contract between the parties without an intermediary. This system will naturally resolve problems such as fraudulent advance payment to seafarers, embezzlement by unregistered employment agencies, overdue wages, and forgery of seafarers' books. If this system design is commercialized and institutionally activated, it is expected that stable wages will be guaranteed to seafarers, and in turn, the difficulties in human resources supply will be solved. We plan to test it in a local environment for further developing this system.