The Port of Gwangyang is on the southern coast of South Korea in South Jeolla Province. Gwangyang city is home to the POSCO’s Gwangyang Steel Works, the world’s largest facility of its kind. It’s also the development center for the Gwangyang Bay Area Free Economic Zone, to be completed in 2011, when the Port of Gwangyang will focus on container-handling, shipbuilding, and steel production.
Port History
Archeological evidence from the Old Stone Age has been found in six areas near the Port of Gwangyang, including hunting tools and stone blades. Shell mounds and artifacts also confirm New Stone Age habitation of a village there about 4000 BC. Relics of the Bronze Age and burials are plentiful in the area. Further Iron Age artifacts include stone axes, farming tools, an ancient well, and evidence of land reclamation for farming. Later but still ancient tombs and ruins of early villages demonstrate habitation in the 1st Century BC. In 940 AD, the ancient village of Heeyang-hyun was renamed Gwangyang-hyun by the first king, Koryo.
Port Commerce
The Port of Gwangyang’s container terminal features a 100% on-dock system with 22 rows and seven tiers of state-of-the-art container cranes enabling handling of over 10 thousand TEUs of containerized cargo. In 2006, the terminal was to have the capacity to handle 5.5 million TEUs of cargo at over five thousand meters of quay. By 2020, the terminal will have the capacity to handle over 12 million tons of containerized cargo. In 2006, the container terminal covered an area of almost 3 square kilometers, including almost 2 square kilometers of container yard and storage capacity for 123 thousand TEUs.
The Port of Gwangyang also houses a freezing an refrigeration warehouse for handling frozen and refrigerated cargo. It contains two freezer rooms and four refrigeration rooms, and total floor space is 2172 square meters. A rest center for freight car drivers provides amenities for drivers using the container terminal and involved in cargo transportation. The Port of Gwangyang also offers a Seaman’s Club for ships’ crews with a variety of amenities including sauna, restaurant, recreation area, and a Korea seafarers’ welfare and employment center.
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