A Study on Maritime Cooperation between Korea and Georgia

Georgia is located at the crossroads of the East-West and North-South transport corridors. Providing intermodal transport routes between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, the country is a critical part of the Euro-Asian Transport Linkage that joins Central Asia and the Caucasus. As the trade between Asia and Europe grows, there is a great opportunity for countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus, including Georgia and Azerbaijan, to transit some of this trade and to develop themselves as regional trade and logistics hubs. The Governments of Korea and Georgia concluded a bilateral maritime agreement in 2014 and an agreement on reciprocal recognition of certificates of seafarers in 2015. The present paper attempts to identify areas and projects for enhanced cooperation under the framework of the agreements. Through a series of interviews and an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) questionnaire, the paper finds that Korean shipping and logistics service providers suggest ‘customs clearance and freight forwarding’ as the most preferred area for cooperation and investment, whereas the Georgian maritime agencies wish to induce investment in ‘construction and operation of port terminals’. The paper concludes that this preference gap can be narrowed through deeper common understanding on the issues, particularly from the long-term perspective and proposes such areas as ‘seafarers’ and ‘knowledge sharing’ for initial cooperation projects.