• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.131-149
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• 2014

The objective of this study is to describe and determine how and to what extent size of firm, operating vessels and interest cost, leverage, debit maturity, growth opportunity and cash flow affect the cash holdings of Korean shipping companies. A sample of 38 Korean shipping firms for a period of 9 years(from 2005 to 2013) was selected. In panel data regression, this study finds that cash holdings are negatively affected by firm size, operating vessel size and debit maturity, and positively affected by volume of interest costs. In firm's group of relatively large volume of operating vessel, it's cash holdings are affected by debit maturity, cash flows and growth opportunity but in firm's group of small volume of it, interest cost, debit maturity and operating vessel's size are related with cash holdings. It proved that determinants of cash holdings in a high interest costing group are size of operating vessel, interest cost and debt maturity. On the other hand, debit maturity, growth opportunity, firm size and extent volume of vessels are associated with cash holdings in relatively row interest costing group.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.129-138
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• 2016

Shipping companies involved in sea transportation service are exposed to uncertainty due to its volatile business environment. It is crucial that shipping companies take effective strategies to cope with uncertain business environments and to achieve high business performance. Using Porter's generic strategy, this study investigates the relationships between environmental uncertainty and competitive strategies, and the impact of competitive strategies on firm's business performance. To test hypotheses, OLS regressions and Tobit analysis were conducted on Korea shipping companies who provide global sea transportation service. The findings of this study can be summarized as follows. First, variation of environmental uncertainty affects cost-leadership strategy and differentiation strategy. Diversity of environmental uncertainty affects differentiation strategy, but not cost-leadership strategy. Second, firms attain business performance by using the cost-leadership strategy. That is, shipping companies can achieve high business performance by reducing their operating costs in the entire process of transportation service.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.534-540
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• 2020

Like most developed countries, South Korea is experiencing a severe lack of seafarers. Because young people's demands for a high quality of life has led them to seek shore-based careers. The wage difference between seafaring and shore-based careers has been decreasing gradually, however South Korea's unique Boarding Service Reserve System Policy has helped recruit and retain young sailors and, since 2017, the government has focused on creating new jobs and stabilizing the status of irregular workers in both private and public sectors. It specifically established the Economic, Social & Labor Council to carefully analyze seafarers' employment stability, which previously had been overlooked in the country. This research used the Binary Logit Model (BLM) to analyze the determinants of seafarers' employment stability in both permanent and non-permanent positions. We found that seafarers' employment stability correlated highly with their education level. This means that seafarers who graduated from the above mentioned two maritime universities would have more job stablity than those who graduated from maritime high schools or general universities. Other independent variables, such as the shipping company, vessel, hip management companies, work assignment, rank, and license had no significant impact on employment stability.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.541-549
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• 2020

This study conducts differential analysis on the financial positions of Korean shipping companies before and after the bankruptcy of the H carrier, looking specifically at their financial ratios, profit and loss patterns, and other factors related to their financial operation. Firstly, it was discovered that major measures of financial health, such as average assets per carrier, were not affected by the bankruptcy of the H carrier. However, despite this, most carriers experienced large changes in profits and losses, with total sales and shipping revenues averaging 424.5 billion won and 381.7 billion won respectively before the bankruptcy, but falling by half to 252.1 billion won and 234.6 billion won after the bankruptcy. Additionally, charter revenues and expenses also dropped by more than half. EBIT/sales and pre-tax revenue margins were also heavily affected after the bankruptcy, with both figures averaging 8% and 3% respectively before the bankruptcy, but falling into the negative range at -2% and -8% post-bankruptcy, resulting in significant deterioration in operational profitability. The study concludes that there is an urgent need to establish a global sales network, improve cost structures, and consistently secure stable cargo in order to increase Korean carriers' profitability. Of all financial measures, liquidity and total asset efficiency were identified as the most severely-impacted by the H carrier bankruptcy, thereby requiring the most pressing policy addressing.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.629-636
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• 2013

There is no safety evaluation index with marine accidents and information of ship's safety management result for good grasp of safety management level of shipping company and effective monitoring. In this paper, we proposed a SMEI(Safety Management Evaluation Index) for evaluation of shipping companies. The SMEI is consist of MAR(marine accidents ratio), SSMR(ship safety management ratio) and SAP(safety advantage point) through brainstorming of the expert group and AHP(analysis hierarchy process)in previous study. And weights of SMEI are calculated using experts's opinions through the Delphi method. We also verified the validity of proposed SMEI to 119 Korean shipping companies with 916 ocean-going ships of Korean flag, which grouped three part (small, mid and big) by number of ship and gross tonnage. And we found out 19 shipping companies, 8 companies in group1 & group2 respectively and 3 companies in group 3, with score below 1.0 by SMEI. In these companies, there are no marine accidents in recent 3 years and appeared low frequency remarkably in the detention and mojor non-conformity by data analysis.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.157-178
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to forecast the ship-management market size and to propose a management improvement scheme to support Korean ship management companies in the stagnating world shipping market. Recently, global shipping companies have begun outsourcing all ship management activities. However, the Korean ship-management market represents just 3.75% of ocean shipping companies' sales, making it necessary to enlarge this market. This study performs a business analysis of ship management companies in Korea. The findings show that these companies' profitability and financial structures are not very good, mainly because of insufficient management ability and small firm sizes. Therefore, we propose that the Korean government supports crew training programs and shipping financial systems.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.157-172
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• 1996

The long-existed licence system which has acted as one of the strong barriers to entry in the ocean shipping market in Korea is supposed to repeal in the near future. As a result, competition among the different sizes of firms which are operating under regional shield by means of the licence will be intensified. The main objective of this paper is to estimate the degree of economies of scale and economies of density for various firm sizes. For the successful estimation of economies scale and economies of density, translog cost models are developed and estimated through SURE technique which was suggested by Zeller (1963). The major findings are as follows ; All shipping firms in the sample exhibit economies of scale and density. Even small size shipping firms under licence system, they show substantial economies of scale contrary to the wide-known idea that small-size firms are subject to diseconomies of scale. For the ranked firm sizes according to owned deadweight tons, the degree of economies of scale decreases as the firm sizes are larger and larger. The degree of economies of density moderately declines from the smallest to the firm size of 30-60 thousand deadweight tons and sharply rise thereafter. And the large shipping firms with over half-million deadweight tons exhibit high economies density compared to other sizes of firm. If follows that the larger firms have great advantage in competition if the licence system is abolished.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.591-600
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• 1987

To evaluate the detection rate and the density of Vibrio vulnificus by the sample, sampling area and date, 240 sea water samples and marine invertebrates were collected from coastal area of Korea including Pohang, Chungmu, Yeosu, Kunsan, Sihwa and Pusan from March to October, 1986. Eighty two strains oft of 1087 strains isolated from the submitted samples were identified as V. vulnificus. Forty seven of total 240 samples were positive in V. vulnificus which were constituted by 31 out of 138 sea water samples and 16 out of 102 marine invertebrates. Detection rate of V. vulnificus among the invertebrates was high in the crab, Portunus trituberculatus and the ark shell, Anadara broughtonii samples. The samples collected at Kunsan area showed the highest in detection rate of the bacterium as $67\%$ during the study period and the density of V. vulnificus was high in the sea water which was low in salinity.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.25 no.7
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• pp.858-866
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• 2019

In line with the transformation of the shipping industry, the number of mixed-manning ships is on the rise - bringing foreign sailors aboard with their local sailors. During on-board work, a culture is formed according to mixed-manning, which leads to changes in on-board living environment. This causes various problems such as communication problems, and lack of education and training. In order to identify and solve problems caused by mixed-manning, this study presented a plan for systematic education of foreign seafarers. The officials in charge of the affairs of foreign sailors conducted questionnaire surveys at various shipping lines. The questionnaire survey results were analyzed using the IBM SPSS Statistic 26 program. Three improvement measures were proposed to solve the problems after identification of the types of education, education methods, and problems of foreign employees. This study revealed that it is imperative to systematize related education of foreign seafarers based on the results of the survey.

• Proceedings of KOSOMES biannual meeting
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• 2008.05a
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• pp.11-17
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• 2008

As of Jan. 2006, numbers of korean registered ocean-going vessels reached 546 which amounted to 13,716,733 G/T. Vessels, generally spooking, finish her life cycle and are dismantled or recycled. However, most of these activities have been done in undeveloped countries instead of in developed countries as the environmental restrictions in developed countries get more strict, accordingly international bodies adopted shipbreaking-related guidelines and prohibit transboundary of obsolete ships, taken as one of wastes. The authors made the Working Guidelines on Shipbreaking to cope with substandard working environment and reduce the environmental damage, and came up with a method to make a inventory of hazardous materials for effective control, finally framed a draft of Environmentally Sound Ship Recycling examining related international conventions such as Basel Convention, IMO Guideline, ILO Guideline and IMO new Convention(draft) on shipbreaking and recycling.