The problem of illegal Chinese fishing in the Yellow Sea has been a thorny issue between Korea and China over the past two decades since the Korea-China Fishery Agreement entered into force in 2001. After dwindling due to the restrictions put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic, illegal Chinese fishing has reemerged as a hot issue, with illegal fishing operations recovering. The typical modus operandi of illegal Chinese fishing in the Yellow Sea can be divided into several categories: illegal fishing off the NLL that takes advantage of the strained military situation between the South and the North; violations of fishing conditions in Korea’s EEZ, which include unlicensed fishing, violating prohibited areas, and violating operational conditions; intrusion of Chinese fishing boats into the Korean EEZ to illegally fish; new illegal fishing methods in recent years, such as bumjangmang, a kind of stow net, emerged to avoid law enforcement.