The South Korean government has decided to ban single-hull tankers as of January 1, 2011. All locally registered single-hull tankers above 5,000 DWT are banned from operations in South Korean waters and all foreign single-hull tankers are banned from the country’s ports.
The decision was expected and comes as a result of the 2007 Hebei Spirit catastrophe, when the tanker was hit by a barge and spilled 10,500 tonnes of crude oil. IMO regulations ban single-hull tankers as of 2016 but in many places single-hulls are already banned.