Cargo processed at South Korean seaports dipped from a year earlier in October, mainly due to a drop in exports and imports, the government said Wednesday.
  

The country's seaports handled a combined 121.687 million tons of cargo last month, down 0.3 percent from the same month last year, according to the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries.
  

Export-import cargo, which accounted for 82.1 percent of the total, contracted by 1.6 percent on-year to 99.943 million tons, while domestic cargo rose 6.5 percent to 21.744 million tons.
  

Compared with September, total cargo handled by seaports rose 4.9 percent. In the previous month local ports processed 115.977 million tons of cargo, with export-imports reaching 96.144 million tons and domestic cargo hitting 19.833 million tons.
   

The ministry said that while overall cargo numbers backtracked in the face of weaker-than-expected global economic growth, transshipment containers processed by South Korean ports rose.

Transshipment cargo, or cargo processed at a local port while en route to a different final destination, rose 9.4 percent in October vis-a-vis the year before to 914,000 twenty-foot equivalent units.
 

Pure export-import container cargo, on the other hand, moved down 3.6 percent to 1.231 million TEUs. Domestic container cargo stood unchanged at 20,000 TEUs
  

In regards to non-container cargo, data showed a 1.4 percent on-year increase to 86.06 million tons. Shipments of sand, grain and machinery rose, while numbers for minerals and chemicals fell.
  

By port, container cargo processed at the country's largest seaport of Busan, 453 kilometers southeast of Seoul, fell 2.2 percent compared with the year before. Cargo handled by other major ports like Gwangyang, Ulsan and Incheon all declined, while numbers for Pyeongtaek-Dangjin shot up 14.1 percent.
  

Busan, meanwhile, ranked No. 6 among the world's busiest container ports in freight handled in the first 10 months of the year. The ranking is unchanged from 2014. The port handled 16.255 million TEUs, compared with 17.045 million TEUs for fifth-place Hong Kong. Shanghai remained at the top list, followed by Singapore, Shenzhen and Ningbo-Zhoushan, the ministry's data showed. (Yonhap)