Environment Change of Marine Transportation and Inter-related Development of Shipping and Shipbuilding Industries in Korea

Environment of marine transportation market is changing rapidly. Due to globalization of world economy, marine transportation of cargos, especially trade using container boxes, is increasing dramatically. Fierce competition in the global market of container transportation forces the shipping industry to seek the economy of scale to reduce transportation cost, and drives the merge and alliance of liner shipping companies. Mega-sized container ships, having capacity over 10,000 TEU, were introduced, and appeared recently, in order to reduce the unit transportation cost. Korean shipping and shipbuilding companies are competitive, and have considerable market share in the global market. Even though both industries are inter-connected through ships and have many common interests in order to enlarge the global market share, inter-relation between two industries is surprisingly insignificant. In this paper current issues in the process of environmental change of marine cargo transportation are reviewed, and inter-relation of shipping and shipbuilding industries is discussed. Suggestions for inter-related development of Korean shipping and shipbuilding industries are given, and means for mutually beneficial collaboration are suggested.