South Korea ocean freight by the numbers
Last updated:
Shipzy samples 100 port-to-port lanes for South Korea, on which 7 ocean carriers publish schedules, connecting 48 countries.
The fastest scheduled transit is 2 days, the median scheduled transit is 42 days, and 9 in 10 sampled sailings complete within 65 days.
34% of the 1227 sampled sailings are direct; the remainder route via a transshipment hub.
The VGM cutoff falls a median of 4 days before departure, across 943 sampled sailings.
Figures describe 1227 sailings sampled from 7 carrier APIs, last refreshed 7 November 2026.
Cutoff lead times in South Korea
| Cutoff | Median days before departure | Sailings sampled |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation cutoff | 4 | 765 |
| VGM cutoff | 4 | 943 |
| Reefer cutoff | 3 | 377 |
| Port cutoff | 3 | 425 |
| Dangerous goods cutoff | 3 | 384 |
| Cargo cutoff | 2 | 558 |
| Terminal cutoff | 1 | 218 |
Most-sampled trade lanes from South Korea
| Partner country | Lanes sampled |
|---|---|
| CN | 7 |
| MY | 5 |
| US | 5 |
| CO | 4 |
| BH | 3 |
How these numbers are measured
Figures come from the ocean schedule APIs Shipzy integrates with: CMA CGM, COSCO, Hapag-Lloyd, MSC, Maersk, ONE, ZIM. They describe the lanes Shipzy samples, not every sailing serving South Korea.
The nightly sync sweeps nine global hub ports plus a set of regional template lanes, storing up to three sailings per lane, and refreshes one country per night. So coverage leans towards intercontinental routings, and the as-of date above can be several weeks old for smaller markets.
Transit figures are medians rather than averages, so a few multi-transshipment routings cannot distort them. Cutoff lead times exclude carrier-estimated cutoffs and any lead outside a 0–21 day window. Emissions figures are not published here, because only one carrier reports measured CO2; the rest are modelled from transit time and would restate transit days as emissions.
- Carriers sampled: Derived from ocean schedules published by 7 carrier APIs, as of 7 November 2026.
- Of global fleet capacity: Sum of each sampled carrier’s share of global container capacity. Describes the carriers, not this country’s market share.
- Port-to-port lanes: Derived from ocean schedules published by 7 carrier APIs, as of 7 November 2026.
- Countries connected: Derived from ocean schedules published by 7 carrier APIs, as of 7 November 2026.
- Fastest transit: Derived from ocean schedules published by 7 carrier APIs, as of 7 November 2026.
- Median transit: Median of 1227 scheduled transit times. Median, not mean — a few multi-transshipment routings would distort an average.
- Direct sailings: Share of 1227 sampled sailings with no transshipment. Carriers count legs slightly differently, so treat as indicative.
- Named services: Derived from ocean schedules published by 7 carrier APIs, as of 7 November 2026.
- Vessels seen: Derived from ocean schedules published by 7 carrier APIs, as of 7 November 2026. Counted by vessel name, so spelling variants may inflate this slightly.