• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.44
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• pp.181-210
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• 2009

This paper discusses global expansion and global strategies of shipping firms. Acknowledging the lack of research on global expansion by freight transport companies, this paper employs the resource-focused model, and explores "why shipping companies emerge" and "why the strategic behaviour of shipping companies is different in the global market". Despite there being a plethora of theoretical and empirical studies on the international operations of business organisations, it is acknowledged that researchers have largely neglected the issues regarding the international expansion within the freight transport industry. Identifying the general lack of contemporary studies concerning the international behaviour of shipping firms, this study addresses the important gap in our knowledge in the theoretical manner. The theoretical analysis suggests that the shipping company's internal resources can be a real reason for the international market participation.

• Journal of Ship and Ocean Technology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.34-45
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• 2007

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.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.105-120
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• 2017

This study analyzed changes in the competitive structure of the global shipping container market and the appropriate capacity of the container fleet in Korea from three perspectives. The competitive market analysis applied the market concentration ratio and Hirschman-Herfindahl index, while the appropriate capacity analysis was based on the following three aspects: (1) Fleet capacity to secure competitiveness in the global shipping alliance; (2) Fleet capacity to increase national fleet coverage of domestic import and export container cargo; and (3) Fleet capacity analysis through the panel model considering the characteristics of the major shipping countries. Analysis of the global shipping container market reveals an oligopoly industry, and Korea's container fleet capacity is insufficient across all three analyses.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.51-70
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• 2018

This study is to define the relationship between capital structure and the market share in the global shipping market, estimating the debt-equity ratio. To analyze the impact of the debt-equity ratio on market share, this study collected data from the 100 largest shipping companies from 2010 to 2017. Results identified that global shipping lines moderate their debt-equity rates to 62%, and all of them strategically utilize debt in order to increase market share in global shipping market. In comparison between the group focused on cargo volume and another group focused on freight rates, it is found that the group focused on cargo volume increase their handling cargo volume through increasing the debt rates. Another group used debt rate for reducing the freight rate and enhancing market power. Furthermore, after classifying the samples into high-growth and low-growth companies, this study compared the group focused on cargo volume and another group focused on freight rates. As a result, the low-growth group showed more significant impacts of the debt rate on market share than the high-growth group. The results of this study provide useful insight for future strategic decision making of shipping lines in the global shipping market.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.115-148
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• 2005

In the liner market, a strategy is hard to sustain as competitors can easily imitate the strategy. For examples, when a number of shipping companies pursue this space exchange strategy in a liner market, their competitors are likely to build a cooperative alliance, following similar strategic pattern without any difficulty. Such strategic imitations are universal in international liner market. Therefore, the success of global alliance requires following critical considerations. First, the strategy of global alliance should be designed the way it gives the liner operators an economy of scale, which could be a key advantage in the competitive market. Second, thorough global alliance the lines should be able to improve their transport service through the reduction of operating costs and the business rationalization. The international alliance today is characterized by a strategic cooperation among a limited number of 'mega-carriers'. Such cooperation between the large-sized operators has come in many different forms. However, the trend has been towards the space exchange agreement, where a carrier on a route offers to another carrier a fixed number of spaces for a fixed period of time. the major carriers have been entered into groupings by integrating their services structures to increase market power. With reference to the above, this study has the following primary objectives: (1) to explore the present status of global alliance in liner shipping industry, (2) to prospect the future trend of the global alliance.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.89-110
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• 2017

The organization of the shipping conference -an international cartel, was approved by countries that recognized it for stabilizing routes as well as preventing excessive competition among liner shipping companies and recognized the characteristic of the liner service that is regularly repeated in the international liner shipping market. However, due to competition in bulk transportation and development of multimodal transport through new entrants, power expansion and vessel enlargement of non-aligned shipping companies; the shipping conference started collapsing, and was eventually abolished. As the shipping conference played an important role in the liner shipping market, there were changes in the competition structure of the liner shipping market, and this accordingly drove research on the effects of the abolition of the shipping conference on the liner shipping market. The effects of abolition of the shipping conference on the liner shipping market was analyzed after surveying the factors related to abolition of the shipping conference, and through the use of correlation and multiple regression analyses. Subsequent to the abolition of the shipping conference, the liner shipping companies increased global containership bottoms. Consequently, this led to fierce competition of freight charges. As a result, profitability of shipping companies diminished. However, shipping companies with a dominating cost structure recorded profits, while shipping companies with an inferior cost structure started recording a loss.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.115-134
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• 2020

Purpose - International trade leads to the international division of labor, improving the efficiency of the global economic system. Transport costs are a more serious barrier to international trade than customs tariffs. An increase in competition in the transport sector may thus lead to a reduction in transport costs. However, if a carrier's nationality significantly influences transport costs, simply adding more competing carriers of different nationalities would be ineffective. Therefore, it is necessary to establish national or regional carriers to influence competition and reduce transport costs. This study investigates this "nationality effect" by treating Hanjin Shipping's collapse as a natural experiment. Design/methodology - The theoretical basis of this study is the 3rd-degree price discrimination in container shipping market. By using the monthly data of container freight rates of Korea, China and Japan, this study shows the so-called Korea Premiums, which are the empirical counterparts of nationality effect in Korea container shipping market. For this empirical investigation, the structural model with state-space form is used and the dummy models are also estimated. In addition, because China has been also affected by the Hanjin's collapse, the China premiums are considered too. Findings - Compared with Japan's case, it is shown that there had been the so-called Korea premiums since the collapse of Hanjin Shipping. These results are robust from both the state-space model and dummy models. The time pattern of Korea premiums was consistent with the market evolution, especially the pattern of substitutability in container shipping markets. In addition, this paper shows the magnitude of Korea premiums. Originality/value - The argument of this study that the nationality effect can be interpreted as an extended concept of the home market effect is original, which is expected to evoke future research efforts. Further, the discussion on the shipping industrial policy from both horizontal and vertical aspects will provide the relevant policy makers with solid information, especially for the policy coordination in a global scale.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.181-200
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• 2022

After the COVID-19 pandemic, a global economic downturn and a recession in the shipping market are expected, it is important for domestic shipping companies to establish appropriate strategy in response to the recession. Accordingly, domestic shipping companies should grow into integrated logistics companies that combine shipping and logistics in the future. And for this purpose, it is necessary to actively promote logistics integration with external shipping and logistics companies. This paper presents the direction of logistics integration for domestic shipping companies to develop as integrated logistics operators with competitiveness in the global shipping market, and presents detailed alternatives. Domestic shipping companies lack the infrastructure such as ships, port terminals, and warehouses, so they have a weak capacity to independently promote logistics integration. At the shipping company level, a logistics integration promotion strategy should be established, and accordingly, logistics infrastructure, service network, and logistics integration operating system should be established. The government should provide tax benefits for logistics integration, financial support for M&As led by domestic shipping companies, a standardized information sharing system, and preparation of educational courses for nurturing digital manpower.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.367-368
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• 2022

The shipping industry is sensitive to the global economy. Therefore, when events such as the global economic crisis occur, shipping market freight rates react immediately, and the long-term stagnation of the industry has been repeated accordingly. In particular, Hanjin Shipping's bankruptcy is an incident in which the nation has become aware of the chronic problems of the Korean shipping industry. The government is making great efforts to rebuild the collapsed shipping industry and become a global leader country. In order for the Korean shipping industry to grow into a global leader, it is important to appropriately respond to the crisis. To this end, it is necessary to establish and operate a crisis response system for the shipping industry at the national level.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• 2002.03a
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• pp.39-51
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• 2002

Online exchange is a cost-effective approach to trade goods and information among multiple sellers and buyers. Shipping industry includes lots of global entities such as shippers, liners, ship owners and shipping agents. Marine insurance companies and ship repairers and many other groups are also supporting the industry. However, international shipping exchanges are located on few cities in the world. Its our motivation that a shipping market can be online so that market participants do the dealing while sitting where they are with more efficient manner, preferable price and larger pool of candidates of trading partners. This paper presents Korean governmental project of building a cyber shipping exchange. The exchange covers ship sale and purchase, charter, insurance, freight futures, repairs, supplying of ships oil and database service. The workflows of each business were analyzed and designed to fit for online environment. The project includes design of trading mechanism, online documents, data flow, data storage and security. Online match making and trading mechanisms such as auction, reverse auction, bid are used. The whole trading process involves multiple organizations and business processes. So, this Paper focuses on how each organization would play their roles so that users can complete transactions with integrated and transparent view. The online exchange selves also as maritime portal site that links to other sites for cooperation vertically or horizontally, and serves database and information in global perspective. This paper also issues and discusses the justification of an online shipping exchange