Hong Kong owner Win More Shipping has failed in a court bid to enlist help to free a tanker detained in South Korea for alleged violations of North Korean sanctions.
The owner had asked the territory's high court to order the Hong Kong ship register to help release the 16,500-tonne carrier Lighthouse Winmore (built 1975).
But the court said the detention of the vessel involved foreign affairs and was therefore the central government’s responsibility, the South China Morning Post reported.
It said it was up to the Chinese government to intervene.
“The [Hong Kong Special Administrative Region] is not a ‘state’ or ‘flag state’ of the vessel,” presiding judge Justice Anderson Chow Ka-ming ruled, refusing to grant Win More permission to lodge a judicial challenge.
Lighthouse Winmore has been held at the South Korean port of Yeosu since December 2017.
The Hong Kong administration cancelled the ship’s DOC on 21 December.
