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Busan (Pusan), Korea’s second largest city (population 3.6 million) and fifth busiest port in the world, is experiencing rapidly increasing trade, global connections, events, and resulting infrastructural projects. What should Busan do to better handle the social, political, and economic complexities brought by these changes?

To answer this question, this paper explores the relationship of globalization and culture, as treated by cultural anthropology. It also considers how the tools of applied social science and anthropology can be mobilized to help Busan and the southeast region of Korea deal with these challenges.

After introducing anthropological treatments of culture, globalization and global problems, I discuss how applied social science/anthropology is used in international business/trade, tourism, and transport/logistics, especially the third area. To show how applied social science can help transportation and logistics projects in Busan and Korea, I present lessons from case studies and examples in Denver, Colorado Springs, Chuuk (Truk, South Pacific), and Korea.

Applied social science and applied anthropology present a wealth of helpful methods and insights to help Busan and Korea improve planning, public participation, political, social and environmental issues in transport and logistics projects, and to help prevent ethical and budgetary lapses. Finally, I offer suggestions for initial training programs and future studies to help expedite these goals.

This paper presents a generic framework on port logistics development and its interaction with hinterland regions. Although earlier work on the topic (e.g. by Ferrari et al., 2006; Kuipers and Eenhuizen, 2004) offers valuable insights in the subject, it contains limitations in geographical applicability. Ports indeed face dissimilarities in, for instance, locational characteristics (a.o. distance from the sea and nautical accessibility) and hinterland connections. Only when a model for determining seaport-located logistics activities takes into account these issues of dissimilarity among ports, the framework could be applied to a variety of seaport ranges worldwide. In this paper we aim to provide a first version of such a framework. More particularly, by means of a survey conducted in the Port of Busan the shortcomings of traditional approaches are illustrated. We then propose a more encompassing model, which seems to explain fairly well the attractiveness of Busan in terms of logistics activities. This framework explicitly adds port and hinterland characteristics to the list of factors decisive in the choice of the location of logistics activities. Finally, we would like to remark that our research on this topic is still ongoing and results for surveys planned in New York and Antwerp will be reported in a later stage.

The aim of this chapter is to identify factors that have been affecting the increase of transhipment (T/S) cargoes of the port of Busan and to explore how these factors can be utilised more effectively to attract and increase T/S cargoes through the development of a port choice model using the technique of system dynamics (SD). To clarify the reason why T/S cargoes have increased in the port of Busan, several steps have been taken as follows.

The first step was to design a quantitative model to explain the development of T/S cargoes during the last decade. The second step was to define dependent and independent variables for multiple regressions after testing variable significance. For this, data collection and the accuracy of validation have been achieved by using the direct interview procedure involving experienced experts from both Korean and foreign shipping companies. After validating the model with the collected data, the final step was to find variables that confidently explain the model.

It is found that two variables are clearly identified as core factors that describe well the development of T/S cargoes in the port of Busan: ‘Mohring effect’ and total cost. Further, it is strongly recommended, through this empirical study, that an incentive scheme be changed to the way in which more feeder vessels rather than mother vessels can reduce their direct costs to call at the port of Busan.

Based on regression analysis, it is also found that the sensitivity model for transhipment cargo is useful for dynamic forecasting in changing the cost factor and Mohring factor with time-series technique.

The Yangtze River Delta (YRD) has become the world’s most important container-export area in the world because of the huge growth of container volume from China. Shanghai, the gateway of the YRD, handles most of the cargoes. But the nature of river port has restricted its development, which forced China to built the Yangshan deepwater port to act as the mega hub in the region. In response to the emergence of the YRD and Yangshan, two traditionally transshipment centers in the region, Busan and Kaohsiung, have implemented strategies to in response to the emergence of YRD and Yangshan. This paper analyzes Busan’s and Kaohsiung’s strategies and tries to forecast the development of these ports. Research result shows Busan is aggressive and ambitious but that Kaohsiung has little chance of becoming the mega-hub in the region.

This paper analyzes the logistics patterns of Korea to elaborate the strategies of Korean Free Economic Zones (FEZs) in relation to Northeast Asian logistics hubs. As the surface transportation of Korea, China and Japan, is cut off by geographical factors and by political border lines, this paper confines the analysis scope to air and maritime transportation.

From the analysis of air and maritime transportation in Northeast Asian region, this paper tries to understand the cargo flow from and to Korean airports and ports by region and by commodity types, and thereby, to identify the main counterpart regions of trade by commodity types and by modes. The policy implications for the development strategy of Korean FEZs (Incheon, Busan, and Gwangyang) are described from those analyses.

There are two objectives of this study: to analyze gaps in customer satisfaction and to test the customer loyalty gap on the basis of the reputation of Busan New Port. This study identifies the relationships between variables as well as the conceptual and operational definitions using prior research. Data was collected from 93 members of the International Freight Forwarders Association. The reliability and validity of the data was analyzed and the relationships between the variables were tested by analysis of covariance. The results are as follows: First, the reputation of Busan New Port means the abilities in which the port provides valuable benefits to international freight forwarders. The analytical results show that there is a gap in customer satisfaction between high- level and low- level reputation. Second, the levels of reputation are based on the gap in customer loyalty. This means that there are gaps in the friendly attitude of international freight forwarders and sustainable usage on the basis of the varying levels of port reputation.

This study aims to identify the characteristics of the maritime shipping network in Northeast Asia as well as compare the level of port connectivity among these container ports in the region. In addition, this study analyses the change in role and position of 20 ports in the region by clustering these ports based on connectivity index and container throughput and route index.

This study employs Social Network Analysis (SNA) to delineate the international connectivity of major container ports in Northeast Asia. Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is used to identify each port's connectivity index and container throughput index, and the resulting indexes are employed as the basis to cluster 20 major ports by fuzzy C-mean (FCM).

The results revealed that Northeast Asia is a highly connected maritime shipping network with the domination of Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Busan. Furthermore, both container throughput and connectivity in almost all container ports in the region have decreased significantly due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The rapid growth of Shenzhen and Ningbo has allowed them to join Cluster 1 with Shanghai while maintaining high connectivity, yet decreasing container throughput has pushed Busan down to Cluster 2.

The originality of this study is to combine indexes of SNA into connectivity index reflecting characteristics of the maritime shipping network in Northeast Asia and categorize 20 major ports by FCM.

This study proposes practical digitalization strategies and well-grounded evaluation criteria for maritime container supply chains.

The authors identified the status of supply chain digitalization of the Port of Busan in South Korea and developed three digitalization strategies based on industry requirements and consultations with port experts. The authors proposed 11 evaluation criteria for examining the main digitalization strategies in the supply chain operations reference model, based on a survey among 46 experts and used multi-criteria decision-making approaches to prioritize the strategies and evaluation criteria.

The results delineate the status of the digitalization of a real-world port-focal supply chain. The model can be successfully customized to include well-grounded evaluation criteria for digitalization strategies, and presents a practical way to advance the supply chain digitalization strategies. Based on the survey and evaluation, the authors find that increasing data accessibility and improving quality are preferred to adopting a data and information sharing platform.

As the study is limited to the Port of Busan, future case studies could be undertaken to container supply chains driven by different regional ports.

Stakeholders, such as truckers, terminal operators, and shipping liners, might consider the proposed strategies and evaluation criteria when digitalizing their supply chains.

By identifying the needs and specifications of maritime container supply chain digitalization strategies, developing evaluation criteria, and conducting a case study for proof of concept, the study proposes an operational management process with practical, real-world benefits for port-focal supply chains.

Global value changes continued to expand until the late 2000s. On the other hand, regional value chains have formed around major regional hubs due to the expansion of domestic demand in emerging economies, such as China, and strengthened trade protectionism since the global financial crisis. Such changes lead to the reorganisation of value chains, focusing on domestic markets (reshoring) or neighbouring countries (nearshoring). In particular, the importance of supply chain risk management has been highlighted following disruptions to the supply network due to the COVID-19 outbreak in December 2019. In this regard, major countries such as the USA and the EU are rapidly shifting to regional value chains for stable and sustainable production, rather than primarily aiming for production efficiency targeted at reducing costs. Industries in particular are more exposed to such supply chain risks under the existing structure and it now has become extremely important for businesses to take reaction to such risks. This is especially important for major industries in a country such as automobile or semiconductor manufacturing industries in South Korea. The aim of this study, therefore, is to establish the basis for the simultaneous growth of ports and linked industries by examining the existing structure of the global value chain for the automotive industry, which has a strong presence in South Korea’s domestic economy. In this regard, this research carries out a supply chain analysis focusing on the imports and exports of automotive parts. It also analyses the current structural risks and suggests risk management measures to secure a stable supply chain.