Inter-Korean maritime linkages: Economic integration vs. hub dependence, 1985-2005

César Ducruet (1) , Stanislas Roussin (2)

1 GC (UMR_8504) - Géographie-cités
2 Seric-Corée

This paper investigates the spatial evolution of inter-Korean maritime connections for the last two decades. Based on the circulation pattern and capacity of trading vessels' movements, it applies the Gini coefficient to the ring of external ports connecting North Korea to the outside world. Results show the gradual isolation of North Korea and the increased importance of neighboring transit ports through three main stages. First, traffics concentrate in global hub ports (Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japanese ports). Second, traffics split and spread to closer and smaller transit ports (Busan, Dalian, Nakhodka). Third, traffics re-concentrate upon Incheon, South Korea, which has become the dominant load center of the North in recent years. One difficulty is therefore whether such spatial shift should be attributed to the betterment of inter-Korean relationships (e.g. 2000 summit, maritime agreement) or to the internal problems of North Korea in terms of infrastructure decay and lacks of handling capacity at its ports. Such research allows complementing port concentration studies by analyzing external hub dependence in the case of a collapsing and increasingly isolated economy

Mots clés: external hub; gini coefficient; North Korea; port concentration; DPRK

Domaines: Géographie

César Ducruet, Stanislas Roussin. Inter-Korean maritime linkages: Economic integration vs. hub dependence, 1985-2005. 15th European Conference on Theoretical and Quantitative Geography (ECTQG), Sep 2007, Montreux, Switzerland. pp.133-139. ⟨halshs-00459380⟩