Reconfiguring transport infrastructure in post-war Asia: mapping South Korean container ports, 1952–1978

ABSTRACT

In standard accounts of the origins of the ISO (International Organization for Standardization), or intermodal, shipping container, including Marc Levinson’s The Box and Alexander Klose’s The Container Principle, the story remains centered in Europe and North America, reflecting the issue emerging on the continent in the prewar era, and the post-war growth of the American trucking industry, associated with the expansion of federal highways. In contrast, this essay moves the focus to East and Southeast Asia, reflecting the significance of the Korean War and the Vietnam War as factors driving the shift from break-bulk shipping to containers, here motivated by military logistics. The post-war 1945 reconfiguration of Japan’s wartime empire, involving the reconstitution of relationships deriving from imperial connections, meant that new sites such as Busan, South Korea (1952) and Cam Ranh Bay, South Vietnam (1965 to early 1970s) became the focal points for vast infusions of war-related materials.

KEYWORDS:

• Shipping container
• CONEX
• infrastructure
• Vietnam
• Cold War

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Levinson, The Box; Klose, The Container Principle.

2. Mizuno, Moore, and DiMoia, eds., Engineering Asia; Kushner and Muminov, The Dismantling of Japan’s Empire; Oreskes and Krige, eds. Science and Technology.

3. Nishiyama, Engineering War.

4. Moore, Constructing East Asia.

5. UNKRA in Action.

6. Chung, “From Supply Lines to Supply Chains.” See also Peter Banseok Kwon’s dissertation, The Anatomy of Chaju Kukpang, concerning the transformation of the ROK domestic defense. Jeon, “A Road to Modernization.” Kim, Korean Skilled Workers.

7. P’yŏnghwa wa kŏnsŏl.

8. Nam, Building Ships, Building a Nation.

9. Chung, “From Supply Lines to Supply Chains.” For the quarantine story, see DiMoia, Reconstructing Bodies, especially Chapters One and Two. Jeong-ran Kim is working on the Japanese side of the same period for the repatriation story (forthcoming).

10. Klose, The Container Principle.

11. Bonacich and Wilson, Getting the Goods. If this represents the most recent literature concerning logistics, see also Hamilton and Shin, “Demand – responsive Industrialization,” and Hamilton and Shin, “Change with Continuity,” for a critique of nation-centered accounts. Thanks to Solee Shin for helpful suggestions.

12. Levinson, The Box, 292.

13. See note 8 above.

14. Thailand received substantial aid, and used this to rebuild its infrastructure, especially during Phibun’s rule, 1948–1963. See Muscat, Thailand and the United States. See also Kislenko, Bamboo in the Wind.

15. See note 4 above.

16. Tregaskis, Southeast Asia, Building the Bases; Lahlum, Diary of a Contract.

17. Ernstm Forging a Fateful Alliance; Carter, Inventing Vietnam.

18. Cho, 내가 걸어온길 [The Path I’ve Walked].

19. RTG (Royal Thai Government) firms assumed the responsibility for this type of activity increasingly from the early 1960s. See Ladd, Thailand Transformed.

20. The change in actors has to be associated with the entry of Japanese and Korean firms to the market, along with East and Southeast Asian labor.

21. Aaron S. Moore’s work on Kubota Yutaka and Nippon Koei in post-war Southeast Asia captures this trend. Moore, “Japanese Development Consultancies,” 297–322.

22. Glassman and Choi, “The Chaebol and the US Military.”

23. See note 12 above, 40.

24. USAMGIK records appear along with those of SCAP (Supreme Command Allied Powers) based in Tokyo, as the two occupations ran at the same time. See Brazinsky, Nation-Building in South Korea, Chapter One, “Security Over Democracy.”

25. Klose, The Container Principle, 189.

26. Hwang, The Shadow of Arms.

27. Han and Downey, Engineers for Korea.

28. Kim, 김성준한국 원자력 기술 체제 형성과 변화, 1953–1980.

29. The role of Japan as a trade and technical partner for South Korea would resume following the 1965 normalization agreement, meaning that South Korea had to satisfy differing sets of industrial standards, contingent upon the field or industry. Cha, Alignment Despite Antagonism.

30. Eckert, “Total War.”

31. Kwon and O’Donnell, The Chaebol and Labour in Korea.

32. Hyundai Corporation, 50^th Anniversary history.

33. Vinnell worked first in Korea with UNKRA during the late 1950s and early 1960s (e.g., the USOM building in Seoul), before later working with Korean firms in the Vietnam context. This pattern holds for a number of American contractors.

34. Van Der Burg, Containerisation. See also Paulus, “Logistics and the Forgotten War.”

35. For the Hanjin story, in addition to the company’s own literature, see the autobiographical account of Cho, Cho Choong Hoon, 내가 걸어온길 [The Path I’ve Walked], 67–81.

36. Hanjin Shipping, Hanjin Shipping: History of 60 Years.

37. Daniel, Mann, Johnson, and Mendenhall, Development of Harbour Facilities.

38. See note 22 above.

39. Lahlum, Diary of a Contract.

40. Seoul, To Rise Again (1961–1970).

41. Hong, Cold War Germany.

42. http://www.vietvet.co.kr/. Accessed as of 10 December 2018. The site contains the annual volumes issued by the ROK military.

43. TCN (third country nationals) received a great deal of resentment from Vietnamese precisely because of this issue.

44. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN8GUu-rYUs. Accessed 8 December 2018.

45. Hyundai Construction performed much of this dredging work.

46. Hanjin Shipping, Hanjin Shipping:History of 60 Years, 62.

47. Ibid.

48. World Bank, 1973: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/457111468277475500/Korea-Port-Project.

49. Ibid.

50. Basalla, “The Spread of Western Science.”

51. Kushner and Muminov, The Dismantling of Japan’s Empire in East Asia.

52. Cumings, “The Korea-Centric Japanese Imperium.”

53. Carter, Inventing Vietnam; Elkind, Aid Under Fire; Miller, Misalliance.

54. Vogel, Japan as Number One.

55. Shin and Robinson, Colonial Modernity in Korea.

56. Sato, “The Domestic Infrastructure of Economic Cooperation.”

57. Westad, The Cold War.