Carriers like Cho Yang say they are being left out of the fray for business to the North.Seoul intends to invigorate container routes between North and South Korea for the delivery of government-sponsored cargo.
But commercial inter-Korean volume is said to be still too limited to lure the national shipping carriers into these routes.
The Seoul government announced last January that it would nurture the shipping routes between the North and the South.
A plan to open new direct container routes between Pusan and Wonsan and Pusan and Chunjin this year and to provide US$4.17 million of subsidies to the local shipping firms who join the fray, were announced among these measures.
These measures are considered an inevitable consequence of a South Korean deal to construct two light nuclear reactors in the North, which will need 160,000 workers and a million tonnes of equipment and material annually.
Seoul has also decided to continue delivering aid material, like food and fertiliser, to the North.
Nonetheless local shipping firms are complaining that all the orders have been grabbed by one company: Hansung Shipping.
Other lines claim that out of 50,000 tonnes of fertiliser to be delivered from South Korea's Red Cross to North Korea this year, for example, 45,000 tonnes will be delivered by Hansung under the terms of a contract between Hansung and Korea Red Cross.
Why Hansung, the other lines ask? The answer seems to be that Hansung is the only South Korean shipping company to be approved a licence, which will be granted in August, to operate the direct inter-Korean container service.
"But we cannot understand why the government favours a certain company, despite its claims to try to invigorate the inter-Korean shipping routes,'' a local shipping industrialist said.
When it comes to commercial inter-Korean ties, the low-profit prospects have effectively barred national carriers like Cho Yang or Hanjin Shipping from these routes, say local industrialists.
"It still makes little money and it remains risky to run this commercial inter-Korean route," Kim Un-Dong, general manager at Hansung Shipping, said. "The load is too low, with incoming vessels to the South only half-loaded with North Korean-made commodities and outgoing vessels also only half-loaded with raw materials heading for North Korean factories. Even if things are going smooth enough, it would take at least two or three years before we are likely to make money from the rising commercial ties between two Koreas,'' he said. "Only seven years of know-how in this route is making things a little better for us.''
Hansung Shipping has already provided inter-Korean container services in the past seven years, as Seoul allowed the firm's operating of chartered vessels under a third nation's flag. Currently, Hansung Shipping is running three monthly services with 200-TEU class container vessels on the western Inchon-Nampo trade. It also runs irregular chartered services that can load between 1,500 tonnes and 20,000 tonnes of cargo. This runs to North Korea's four ports, Chunjin, Hungnam, Wonsan and Haeju.