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COVID-19 pandemic clearly demonstrates that seafarers are essential for sustaining world shipping services and global supply chain. Understanding the characteristics of supply and demand in seafarer market will be a solution for the bottleneck issues of seafarer change and shipping services. This paper explores the supply and demand of seafarer market in Korea and evaluates the effects of COVID-19 on both supply and demand sides of Korean seafarers by adopting regression models with panel data for the supply and time series data for the demand. First, this paper finds that the effects of COVID-19 are negative in the demand of Korean seafarer market even with the wider increase of tonnage of the Korean flagged ships in 2020. The demand shock seems to be resulted by the traveling restriction and stricter immigration measures to travellers after the announcement of COVID-19 pandemic. Second, supply in the regression models of panel data is affected negatively after declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic may trigger the hesitation of seafaring due to the travelling restriction and bottlenecks from seafarer changes onboard. Besides these findings, the correlation coefficients between the number of Korean seafarers of merchant ships and merchant fleet illustrate a diverse relationship between the two. The expansion of Korean ocean-going fleet is accompanied by the decrease of Korean seafarers on the Korean flag. The employment of foreign seafarers since 1992 has resulted in the continual decrease of ratings employment in the Korean flagged ships. The inflow of foreign deck officers in the Korean flagged ships after 2005 could lessen the officer deficiency caused by high separation rate of Korean deck officers. This inflow implies that seafarer market in a country not only affects global seafarer market in the world through the changes of seafarer supply and demand in the country, but is affected by the global market. The dual markets of Korean seafarers in ocean-going and coastal shipping present the following phenomena: severe aging of seafarers in coastal shipping and wider difference in welfare level of seafarers between the two. Further research on wage and career advancement of Korean seafarers would widen and deepen our understanding on seafarer market both for Korea and the rest of the world.

•This paper extends the EVAMIX (EVAluation of MIXed Data) method.•These extensions are fuzzy extension, group decision and expert prioritization.•Four criteria and three alternatives are determined for gas transportation industry.•Ship selection is conducted as an empirical study.•The ranking result reflects the recent oversupply of LNG carriers.

More frequent cruisers prefer attractive cruising destinations, excellent geographical locations, diversified oriental cultures, local wildlife, rich tourism resource and exotic experiences in Asia for western travellers. Cruising in the Asian regions has considered as a potential growth in the transport and tourism industry. In this paper, we aim to provide suggestions to industrial practitioners on the development of the cruise port in Asia and identify the key elements of a regional leading cruise hub as desired by different users. Nevertheless, the majority of cruising-related studies were focused on tourism management in the North American and European regions. Relevant cruising studies on maritime transport management in the Asian region are under-researched. In doing so, we newly propose the CRUISE PORT framework by illustrating four representative countries in Asia (South Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Singapore) to look for common characteristics and unique features of cruise ship market in the Asian region. In order to give the valuable information and provide insight into the framework, we carried out semi-structured, in-depth interviews with different practitioners involved in the cruise industry. Through the framework, it fosters the industrial practitioners to implement cruise port strategies, cruise lines strategies and local government planning for the cruise destinations.

Concerns have been raised around pilotage in Korea due to a rise in marine accidents in the 2010s. Since the late 2000s, a debate has been sparked on the most suitable age of retirement for Korean pilots. The debate has focused on the extension of retirement age of pilots from 65 to 68 and whether this will affect the probability of marine accidents. Therefore, it is crucial to calculate the probability of marine accidents in relation to different age groups of pilots. After collecting the data of marine accidents caused by pilot's negligence, the study suggests two measurements of probability of marine accidents during pilotage: on the basis of the number of pilotage services and the hours of pilotage services. The analysis finds that age is not the exclusive cause of pilotage marine accidents by the age group over 65.

With the sound development of ASEAN, more and more attention is paid to hub ports that support cargo and information flows in this marine region. However there are few studies on river and feeder ports. To fill this gap, this study takes a river port as an example to illustrate how to utilize the Balanced Scorecard for evaluating the Core Competences of river and feeder ports. Core competences are helpful for terminal operators when focusing on core strategies, core business and core products / services development for resource limitation. The business pattern which regards core competences as a foundation is beneficial for terminal operators to achieve sustainable competitive advantages. A questionnaire survey has been conducted. The Cronbach alpha method confirms testing reliability of the questionnaire. Study results reveal that two core competences are “capabilities of valuing employee and organization improvement” and “national and municipal government support” for a river port.

Classification societies are one of key organizations that promote the highest standards in ship safety and quality shipping. The paper reviews the ship classification industry and identifies what the classification societies can do to add value to the maritime industry more effectively. To meet this objective, an analysis of the five competitive forces is carried out, together with an opinion survey performed on some of the leading shipping companies, to assess and to establish some of the key factors which should be considered when formulating an overall business strategy for the growth of the classification services business. The findings from the study are discussed with the strategic options and choices. A classification services industrial value chain analysis together with ship management and operation is undertaken to explore the opportunities for classification societies. These findings also provide guidance to policy-makers who design and seek to implement more effective international shipping policies.

This paper analyses the international grain trade flow by using the gravity equation of trade. On the basis of microeconomic theory and the new trade theory, the gravity equation of trade is used to examine grain exports and imports between pairs of countries. One of the main purposes of this paper is to examine how the grain trade is affected by economic factors, population, and country development. By using data of 41 major trading countries over 14 years (1996-2009), the gravity equation of two different specifications are deployed for the investigation. The analysis differentiates between developed and developing countries and identifies the differences between different pairing. Importer's GDP lead to grain trade growing much faster than exporter's GDP. Developing countries tend to import less grain but developed countries import more, if the population is higher. The paper provides a new insight about the grain trade flow between developed and developing countries.

There are needs for ship registers to become business oriented but maintain the quality of fleet. To meet these two objectives, Hong Kong Shipping Register (HKSR) was re-engineered in 1999. An autonomous HKSR was established before the handover of the sovereignty of Hong Kong to China in 1997. When the newly established HKSR began operation, it fell to merely 5.5 million tons in late 1997. In May 2009, the registered tonnage was 41 million tons and the HKSR achieved significant growth of 7.5 times of that in 1997. The study through interviews analyses the paradigm shifts in the shipping registry policy in Hong Kong which led to a successful revitalization of the registered tonnage. External factors of the shipping community and internal factors of the administration in Hong Kong became major drives of the revitalization of the HKSR. The paradigm shifts include a new page of dialogue in formulation of policy of shipping registry with the stakeholders, structural change of quality and survey mechanism in HKSR, restructure of the consultative platforms in connection to enhancement of customer satisfaction, involvement of diplomatic assistance from Beijing and indepth re-engineering of the bureaucratic system in the shipping registry in Hong Kong.

Some universities have their maritime education situated in faculty of engineering while few are included in faculty of business. Emphasises are apparently different for those in faculty of engineering from those in faculty of business. The maritime business curriculum has to fulfill the requirements of accreditation of different international organizations e.g. STCW95 and AACSB. This paper is to study the curriculum developed in maritime education at the Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and it is not easy to fulfill the requirements of different international organizations. The quality of maritime business curriculum offered by educational institutions is critical in ensuring the quality of future shipping executives for the shipping community in Hong Kong.