Recently the scale of international trade in North-East Asia has been increasing and major nations in this area such as China, Japan, Hong Kong compete for gaining Hub-Port through large size and concentration of their Ports. The reason behind these nations' concentrated investment to foster hub port is that hub port can play an important role in the growth of local economy and the economic cooperation with surrounding countries. Furthermore, enormous income from handling of cargoes and ships can promote local and national economy.
Busan Port also has launched Busan Port Authority(BPA) on 16th January in 2004 for the first time in Korean Maritime History. The advent of BPA has become a touchstone of the future of port industry in Korea. In this vein, the idea of finding out the problems BPA has and conducting a research on the solutions and improvement motivated this study.
This study focuses on the present conditions of BPA which introduced the concept of PA for the first time in Korean history. This study mainly relies on previous researches on PA because it is not easy to find out problems of BPA - it has been less than a year since it has started. This study is devoted to helping BPA compete with other developed PAs with excellent management and self-administration system.
First, to set BPA in full motion, legal basis and system to maintain self-government and autonomy should be provided. One of the representative basic principals of PA is self-government and self-supporting accounting system. However, this is limited by Korean PA regulation stating that central government dictates overall management of BPA. Regulations for organizations affiliated with government is also yielding an undesirable influence on BPA.
Second, BPA should continue to develope new business models and diversify them including various cargo services. How to provide value added cargo service can be one of the key elements for BPA to emerge as a hub-port in North East Asia.
Specialization of BPA system is also an essential element to the development of BPA. PA with self-managing capacity should put emphasis on 'Brain Function' analysing the transportation flow all over the world as well as North East Asia. This is why specialists in each area should be added to the system and re-education of the old workers are necessary.
Finally, the acceleration of port infra-structure building including the construction of 'New Port' and other facilities are necessary. Korean government has its own long term schedule for the port industry but concentrated investment by the government in timely manner is the essential element to compete with other PAs, including Chinese PA.