Melting Arctic waters have brought about global opportunities and challenges. One distinctive opportunity presented by the increasingly ice-free Arctic Ocean is its availability for shipping cargos between Europe and Asia. In adopting highly simplified assumptions of the Northern Sea Route(NSR) being navigable and economical enough for shipping and NSR completely substituting for the incumbent Suez Canal route, this paper analyzes the maximum number of voyages possible for the transshipment of container cargo throughput for Korea's trade with Europe, particularly with Europe-17 and Europe-7. Our analysis shows the number of voyages range from over 2,900 to as little as 237 for Europe-17, depending on vessel sizes, when NSR is available for the whole year. With NSR opening for three months, the corresponding figures vary between 727 and 60 for Europe-17, and the figures for Europe-7 are between 2,725 and 222 and 682 and 56 voyages, respectively.

Abstract
I. Introduction
II. Korea’s Foreign Trade with Europe and Russia: Characteristics of Cargo
III. Container Ship Voyages via the Northern Sea Route for Korea-EU Trade
IV. Conclusions
References

• Yeong-Siok HA(Department of International Commerce, Keimyung University)
• Jung Soo SEO(Department of International Commerce, Keimyung University) Corresponding author