35 Ships Back to Korea
The ailing South Korean container carrier Hanjin Shipping reduced the number of its stranded ships to 34. Since Hanjin Shipping filed for court receivership, the company’s vessels around the world were denied entry into ports over payment issues or not allowed to leave.
A government task force handling the Hanjin crisis held the seventh meeting co-chaired by the chiefs of the Ministry of Strategy and Finance and Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries on September 17 and announced that the the number of stranded Hanjin ships idling off the coastal waters around the world dropped to 34, down by two from 36 as of the 14th when the sixth meeting was held.
Hanjin Shipping operates a total of 97 container ships and 28 of them were fully unloaded. After the 14th, the Hanjin Spain and the Hanjin Greece offloaded at the ports of Valencia in Spain and Oakland in the U.S., respectively. The government said that it is holding negotiations to ensure that the Hanjin ships holding their positions off coastal waters will be permitted to dock and unload at the ports in New York, Singapore and Mexico early next week. The company’s 35 other ships, which failed to dock or unload at the ports overseas, will be on their way back to Korea.
The task force team also talked about the current situations of the stranded ships and ways to handle them and 35 other ships to return to Korea as well as the progress of unloading and stay orders.
The government plans to hold another meeting early next week to gather opinions how to handle Hanjin ships that are returning home.