Korean shipbuilders’ CGT closes with Japan’s

While Korean shipbuilding industry is facing the most difficult times ever, its remaining volume orders reached the closest with that of Japan for the first time in 13 years.

A British research agency Clarkson Research Services reckoned on Monday that the remaining orders of South Korean ship makers are 25.54 million compensated gross tonnage (CGT, an indicator calculated by multiplying the tonnage of a ship by a coefficient, determined according to type and size of a particular ship). The same for Japanese ship builders were 22.28 million CGT, 3.26 million less than Korea’s.

This gap between the two nations’ shipbuilding industries is the lowest since August 2003, at 2.59 million. South Korea has always been ahead of Japan in terms of the indicator ever since December 1999.

South Korea has seen a sharp decline in the number after reaching 31.08 in late December last year, while its neighbor has experiencing constant decrease throughout this year as well. But the gap between the two countries has narrowed, as Korea’s pace of decline is bigger than that of Japan’s.

An industry insider expressed concerns that “if this trend continues, Japan’s compensated gross tonnage might soon become higher than that of Korea,” admitting that the late trend represents the severity of the crisis the Korean shipbuilding industry is facing.

정민지기자 jmj@donga.com