＂To make the company better and more fruitful.＂

Interview with Mr. Taewon Park, president of United Shipping

Interviewer: Cheong, Changhoon, director of editing department

Mr. Cheong: Congratulations. You recently became CEO of United Shipping; what is your management vision for this company as its new CEO?

Mr. Park: As CEO, I will work to make the company a better and more fruitful one. Especially, I will provide incentives for people to do their best in whatever position they hold, focusing on acting in concert with workers. In addition, our company is planning to expand our role as a general agent to give faith to our customers.

Mr. Cheong: You are known as an authority on the Middle East. What do you expect the Middle East to go like this year?

Mr. Park: The Middle East will grow gradually without huge changes. It showed high consumption tendencies, causing export cargoes to score high. And, if economic sanctions on Iraq were eased, we could expect another new special procurement. The Middle East looks like it will be better than last year; shipping companies are expecting to recover from fallen rates. However, vessel over-capacity and excessive competition for collecting cargoes made rates recover difficult. But, we can’t let the rates stay down. The economic environment will be key.

Mr. Cheong: United Shipping is a general agent of UASC, receiving a lot of faith from its principal. Especially, I heard that the principal puts deep trust in you. That means UASC exhibited high sales activity. The service between Korea to the Middle East sustained high volumes of cargoes. Could you tell me about the current services of UASC and other planned services?

Mr. Park: Currently, UASC is served by itself in the Korea/Europe trades via the Middle East. We ship 2,800 TEU of cargoes on a monthly basis as a member of United Alliance with Hanjin Shipping and Senator Lines. From the alliance, we ship 400 TEU of cargoes every week. LCL (Less Condensed Cargo) service on a monthly basis is for a domestic engineering and construction corporation and we earn on average 162 million won in commission every month.
With the help of United Alliance, we expect to expand into the U.S, West Coast and East Coast as Hanjin recommended. In Europe bound direct services, better UASC service is expected to add at least 400 to 500 tons of cargoes. As a matter of fact, UASC has stopped calling at Japanese ports in May 1999, which meant that lots of Japanese cargoes needed feeder services to transfer cargoes to the Port of Pusan; this leads to bright predictions for North China cargoes.
Right now, domestic engineering and construction companies are succeeding in getting orders from the Middle East and are expected to earn between 190 and 200 million won additionally.

Mr. Cheong: United Shipping is known as not at all open. Can you comment on this?

Mr. Park: We suffered from dealing with L/G’s (Letter of Guarantee). However, we took principles as the most important thing and banned issuing L/G’s first. Nevertheless, we made customers of old friends and took faith as important.

Mr. Cheong: I know United Shipping is doing an air agent and trading business together. Could you explain about this?

Mr. Park: We are operating planes only to and from Japan and Korea; we uses Varig Brazilian Airline. With the 2002 World Cup games, we are planning to expand and open direct airline services for Central and South America. The current average monthly income is around 30 to 35 million won. If on?line sales is possible, that should rise to between 50 and 60 million won on average.
We also import “Perrier” mineral water for Hotels and large corporations. We are planning to add to our sales network. We are earning 15 million won a month now and expecting around 30 million won a month after expansions.

Mr. Cheong: You have been presiding over “Seon ? woo” for the last ten years as well as being president of LWC, a meeting of liners in Middle East trades. Could you explain what the future looks like for Seon-woo and what the most important factor is in domestic shipping?

Mr. Park: “Seon ? woo”, which is quite young, many shipping and forwarding sales managers meet together to discuss current problems. Though many businesses struggle for market share and from the down-turn in the economy, what is worse, many quality human resources have avoided joining in the shipping industry in the last few years. I earnestly hope for more qualified workers to lead the next generation.

Mr. Cheong: Mr. Park, it has been a pleasure speaking with you. Thank for your time.