Recently, Korea has emphasized on the effort to maximize
efficiency on the national and regional economy as to carry out high-profitable logistics activities accompanying with constructing port-hinterland complexes to serve for a port and inviting logistics facilities and related-manufacturer strategically.
The study had been done in three main steps. Firstly, previous studies were reviewed theoretically, then a concept of a cluster was defined. Secondly the inter-relation analysis was explained, then it defined a concept of a port-logistics cluster. Finally, the strategy to building a port-logistics cluster in Ulsan was suggested using the year 2003-inter-industry relation tables of the Bank of Korea(404 classifications) and Ulsan(153 classifications).
The summarized results from this study are shown below.
First of all, The concept of a port-logistics business is defined. The previous studies on a port-logistics cluster emphasized on forwarding capacity of ports and defined the cluster as a cluster of a port and directly-related businesses. However, a port is highly related to the businesses depending on in-out-freight from the port and so the port-logistics cluster is defined as a cluster of ships, freight, and companies, which is the final consumers of freight.
Secondly, it is classified organizationally for related and depended industries to the port-logistics business. The classification done by the inter-industry relation table of the Bank of Korea is extended further from the classification of industries related a port, which was already handled in the previous studies.
Thirdly, the inter-relation analysis for national and local level is carried out simultaneously. A cluster, in which companies, public institutions, and research centers are placed together, is affected by the economy of the location where a cluster is located. Thus, an analysis based on the local inter-industry relation table is essentially required for a quantitative analysis. In this study, the inter-industry relation tables of the Bank of Korea and Ulsan are compared and analysed and then the results are also compared and analysed. From the result, the port-logistics business has high-ripple effect and needed to invest as a local strategic industry. On the other side, traditional freight business has low-ripple effect. As shown in the result, a strategic investment on the port-logistics business is required.
Finally, the strategy to build a port-logistics cluster is suggested by analysing factors about the pre and post effects on the inter-industry relation table and selecting businesses for invitation. For the cluster in Ulsan, building SOC for the port-logistics industry and restructuring local strategic industries are required. This work will be done by establishing a free economy zone, inviting the financial business, the distribution business, building up cooperation system among educational institutes, companies, and research institutes, and a public committee to take in charge.
The result of the study will be used as one of base studies for building policies for a port-logistics cluster suitable to individual local areas showing the methodology for port-policy making on the aspect of local governments.