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Container vessels bound for the Busan and Gwangyang ports are being shunted to ports in China and Japan because of the near-paralysis of local ports caused by the striking Busan chapter of the truckers union. Also, most truckers servicing the Gyeongin inland container depot in Gyeonggi province joined the strike Tuesday to support the truckers in Busan, bringing the crisis closer to the capital region.
What's worse, Tuesday's government-union negotiations, begun at 3 p.m., broke down immediately, making the crisis even murkier.
With 340 truckers working out of the Gyeongin depot joining the walkout, cargo volume there dropped to 25 percent of normal. Also, about 1,100 truckers from the Gyeongin (Gyeonggi province and Incheon) branch of the union also joined the strike, refusing to deliver cargo, and are encouraging nonunion drivers to join the work stoppage.
Because the Port of Busan is paralyzed, Hanjin Shipping's cargo vessel Baikal Senator, which was supposed to put in at Busan and unload some 700 containers from North America on Wednesday, has changed its destination to Shanghai.
China Shipping and other foreign companies with vessels bound for Korean ports are redirecting them to Kobe, Japan, or Shanghai.
While the Port of Busan handled 32 percent of its usual volume Tuesday, a bit higher than Monday, the paralysis continued; Gwangyang Port only handled 5 percent of its average daily volume.
The Busan Metropolitan Police Agency is searching for six leaders of the walkout, and intends to arrest them for illegally interfering with port operations. The police say they will also arrest the owners of about 600 trucks parked at Busan's Sinseondae Container Port on the same charges.
(Park Ju-young, park21@chosun.com )
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