21.04.07South Korea's Box Traffic Edges down 0.9% in February

South Korean ports handled a total of 2.21 million TEUs of containers in February, down 0.9% year on year. In breakdown, exports accounted for 650,000 TEUs, down 4%, but imports grew a favorable 3.1% to 620,000 TEUs. Those transshipped in the nation amounted to 930,000 TEUs, which shrank 1% and had been on the decline since the beginning of the year.

By port, throughput at Busan, which enjoyed a year-on-year improvement in January, turned negative, going down 3.4% to 1.677 million TEUs. Thanks to notable growth in shipment prior to the Lunar New Year holidays, on the other hand, container movement to and from Incheon was massive, surging 36.4% to 246,000 TEUs and registering a year-on-year increase for 11 months in a row. At Kwangyang, export and import containers numbered 140,000 TEUs in total, down 6.5%, while transshipment containers were even more stagnant due to service revisions made by members of THE Alliance, plunging 51.4% to 18,000 TEUs.