BUSAN – South Korea’s Busan port is aiming to be a fully automated, artificial intelligence-driven smart port at about the same time that Singapore’s Tuas mega port will be completed around 2040.
When both ports are completed, they will each have 66 berths capable of handling the next generation of ultra-large container vessels.
There are other similarities already – both are major transhipment ports, with Busan currently the world’s second-busiest transhipment port after Singapore, coming in at 14 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) to Singapore’s 40 million TEUs.
Transhipment refers to the transfer of cargo between vessels at an intermediate port before it reaches the final destination.
After completion, Busan port will double its current container handling capacity to nearly 40 million TEUs, while the new Tuas port is expected to have a handling capacity of 65 million TEUs, making it the world’s largest fully automated seaport.
But despite parallels in the push to scale up and automate port operations, Busan is not setting itself out to compete with Singapore’s mega port. Rather, the South Korean port’s direct competitors are the world’s largest and third-largest port respectively – China’s Shanghai and Ningbo-Zhoushan ports.
Observers say Busan and Singapore occupy fundamentally different competitive positions – shaped not only by geography and shipping routes, but also by exposure to geopolitical risks weighing on cargo flows.
Busan is South Korea’s largest port and accounts for about 80 per cent of the country’s total container cargo.
As part of the southern city’s ambitions, the Busan Port Authority (BPA) announced in February an investment plan totalling 892.1 billion won (S$770 million) through 2030 to modernise port operations, of which 435 billion won is specifically targeted at AI-driven transformation.
The plan is also part of South Korea’s larger push to become one of the world’s top three AI powers, alongside the United States and China by 2030.
