The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs(MLTM) announced that the whole cargo throughput handled through Korean ports in July had slightly increased totalling 113.22 million tons, which is up 1.4% from the previous year's 111.7 million tons. The cumulative port traffic up to July this year reached 781.58 tons, up 3.2% from 757.4 million tons in 2011.

Looking over July's traffic by the ports, the port of Inchon, Daesan and Pyeongtaek/Dangjin rose by 10.5%, 8.2% and 8.1% each thanks to increase in export/import of oil and iron ore products. On the other hand, the port of Pohang and Ulsan went through the traffic fall respectively by 4.0% and 2.7% affected by decrease in automobiles and flaming coal.

Classifying into cargo type, ore and machinery experienced rise by 9.9% and 9.8% each boosted by increase in export/import traffic whereas automobiles and flaming coal showed fall by 6.8% and 0.1% from the same period last year.

Meantime, the container throughput in July recorded 1.914 million TEUs, up 0.8%(the cumulative until July 5.5%↑) from last year's 1.899 million TEUs.

Export/import containers showed slight increase by 1.9% recording 1.189 million TEUs because of world's economic contraction and weak domestic demand. Transshipment containers also grew by only 0.4% reaching 698,000 TEUs due to global economic recession and sluggish economic growth in China.