The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs(MLTM) has announced that container traffic of whole Korean ports in June is expected to record 1.869 million TEUs, which is up 4.7% from the same month previous year(1.785 million TEUs).

Among the total traffic, export/import cargoes anticipates to be 1,145,000 TEUs(4.1%↑), transshipment cargoes 690,000 TEUs(7.2%↑), and coastal cargoes 34,000 TEUs(19.2%↓).

While the recovery is being delayed due to uncertainty of world economy and China's sluggish economic growth, export/import cargoes will slightly increase by 4.1%(45,000 TEUs) compared with the same month previous year.

Particularly transshipment cargoes, even if up 7.2% from the same month last year(644,000 TEUs), are predicted to show 1 digit growth rate after 15 months since Feb. last year affected by decrease of China bound traffic that is originated from Europe's recession.

The port of Busan, the biggest port in Korea, seems to record 1,429,000 TEUs, 5.3% up whereas transshipment cargoes 662,000 TEUs(7.0%↑).

As there is no movement in opening direct calling route to China and reduction in route service to Busan, the sluggish growth of transshipment traffic in Busan appears to have been influenced by traffic decrease in North East Chinese ports where the cargoes were exported/imported to America and Europe through Busan. Phase in & out of the ships among shipping lines is regarded as an another factor to the fluctuation of transshipment traffic in Busan.

The traffic in the port of Gwangyang is expected to handle 172,000 TEUs, up 8.8% propelled by national shipping line(H line)'s effort to increase transshipment volume(1,400→7,100 TEUs) as well as surge in export/import volume from trading partners like China(20,000→27,000 TEUs), the US(24,000→32,000 TEUs) and Russia(6,600→10,500 TEUs).

Meantime it is forecasted that the port of Inchon will just reach 162,000 TEUs, down 0.5% owing to decrease in traffic with major trading partners like China(0.2%↓), Japan(7.9%↓) in spite of increase with North East Asian countries such as Taiwan and Philippines.

An official in MLTM said "As an increase of transshipment cargo becomes sluggish because of world's economic recession, we plan to monitor the trend of surrounding ports like China consistently and to cope with changes in conditions of shipping and port industry. Further, our efforts to activate port activities throughout attraction of global enterprises and traffic creation via development of port hinterlands will be continued."