Uiwang Inland Container Depot, South Korea

A large share of the South Korean economy is export-oriented, so containers have to be brought inland and made available to importers and exporters. Seoul is Korea's largest city and a significant manufacturing hub. However, Korea's main deepsea port (and the world's fifth largest) is located in Pusan, about 350 km away at the southeast end of the nation. In 1992, a cluster of two inland container yards was established at Uiwang, about 25 km South of Seoul, forming an inland port that acts as a load center for the metropolitan area and handles about 45% of its container traffic. The first yard has a capacity of about 1 million TEU while the second about half a million TEU. Each yard has intermodal rail terminals, enabling a connection to the port of Pusan. Uiwang can functionally be considered as a satellite terminal where containers are trucked in or out and where custom clearance is realized. 75% of the inland container deport is owned by private transport companies and 25% is owned by the Korean National Railroad, which is a governmental agency. The expansion of the container port at Incheon, 30 km west of Seoul, may challenge the growth of this facility. Still, Pusan has a substantial array of global port calls with the result of anchoring traffic flows.