Source: adapted from Google Earth.
(Google Earth Placemark)

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 to the southeast. 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. As of 2008, 1.9 million TEU were handled by the facility, underlining that it is running above capacity, putting pressures for its expansion and operational improvement.

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 as it involves a lower level of detour from main shipping lanes, anchoring traffic flows.