The American Chamber of Commerce in Korea as well as stakeholders in the international and domestic shipping industries gathered in Seoul on Wednesday, calling for strong political and financial countermeasures to help aid the hemorrhaging shipping industry that is seeing a gross overcapacity of vessels worldwide.

AmCham held its “Seminar on Korea-US Marine Transportation: Current Landscape and Measures for Revitalization,” inviting members of the Korea Shipowners’ Association, Busan Port Authority, Costco Korea and Maersk to voice concerns for the future of the domestic shipping and cargo industry following the fall of Hanjin Shipping last August.

“We need a very healthy shipping industry for all of our prosperity,” said AmCham Chairman James Kim, during the seminar held at the Conrad Seoul Hotel.

“The recent demise of Hanjin resulted in a shockwave across the entire world. It impacted all of us,” Kim said, adding that members of the shipping industry must learn from past pitfalls in order to avoid another financial crisis.

Hanjin Shipping, which was once Korea’s largest -- and the world‘s seventh-largest -- container shipping company, filed for bankruptcy protection last year after finding itself roughly $5.37 billion in debt.

The company had been under financial strain for years because of falling freight rates that were triggered by ship oversupply and the global economic crisis.

Kim Young-moo, vice president of Korea Shipowners’ Association, claimed Hanjin’s demise has resulted in more than 70,000 lost jobs and over 15,000 jobs cut in the shipping industry, adding that the country cannot afford another Hanjin disaster.

“One of the major reasons we are suffering is the oversupply of freight and ship building equipment,” said Kim, noting that in the worldwide fleet of ships in the industry is oversupplied by roughly 13 percent.

“We had given numerous warnings to financial institutions that the shipping industry is in crisis, but the response we get is that we are overreacting,” he added.

Rep. Jung You-sub of the Liberty Korea Party agreed and said that Hanjin’s financial institutions’ lack of knowledge and disregard of the shipping industry’s oversupply crisis are some of the biggest contributors to Hanjin spiraling debt.

“The financial institutions in charge said they did not expect the ripple effects of the company’s bankruptcy to be so huge,” said Jung. “When the head of the financial authorities made that confession to me I realized that they had no knowledge of the shipping industry.”

“Because of the bankruptcy of Hanjin shipping we have seen a great reduction in the number of cargo at the port of Busan and many forwarders seem to have gone bankrupt, these are the ripple effects and the financial authorities had no consideration of this kind of mass effect,” he added. “As a member of the National Assembly I take full responsibility and regret we were not able to stop such a crisis.”

It was also reported on Wednesday that the chief executives of three major Korean shipbuilders are expected to attend the Offshore Technology Conference, where energy professionals meet to exchange ideas for offshore resources, in Houston next month.

According to news reports, the top executives of Hyundai Heavy Industries, Samsung Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering will be attending the annual fair, which features more than 2,500 participating companies from 120 countries and is attended by roughly 90,000 visitors.

By Julie Jackson (juliejackson@heraldcorp.com)