컨테이너 지체료(Container Demurrage)의 법리에 관한 고찰

Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, there have been significant changes in the international maritime transportation market. Contrary to experts' market outlook affected by COVID-19, sea freight rates have skyrocketed to an exceptionally large extent. In particular, inbound cargoes to the United States have incurred unprecedented container demurrage charges due to the serious congestion at discharge ports and terminals, especially in the US west coast. Ocean shipping carriers claimed that congestion at discharge ports and terminals was beyond their control, and accordingly charged the container demurrage to the merchants, especially to consignees in an affirmative fashion. In particular, the container demurrage charges were many times caused by the shipping carriers which failed to supply transport equipments such as trucks and chassis in time, but even in these cases, container demurrage were charged to the merchants. Because the US laws had not specifically stipulated about the container demurrage before, the US congress tried to resolve the container demurrage problem through legislation that occurred during the ocean transportation crisis of COVID-19 period in terms of promoting and incentivizing the container fluidity by amending OSRA2022. Meanwhile, we can find the 24, 000 TEU sized container vessels in the international ocean shipping traffic nowadays, and even some of these vessels are owned by Korean shipping company. This means that we are also thrown at the situations that we may dispute over the container demurrage in Korea as well. Therefore, it is necessary to preemptively take measures by regulating the provisions on the container demurrage in Korean Commercial Code in terms of the obligation of cargo arrival notice provided by shipping carrier as well as the legal nature of the container demurrage, burden of proof to ocean carriers.