The volume of container cargo handled at South Korea’s seaports surpassed the 2 million 20-foot-equivalent units mark for the first time in May on growth of transshipments, the government said Wednesday.

The volume of container cargo handled at the country’s seaports is estimated to have reached more than 2.01 million TEUs last month, up 8 percent from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs.

“This is the largest volume ever recorded on a monthly basis, with the gains made possible by the spike in transshipment cargo,” the ministry said in a press release.

The previous record was reached in March, when local ports handled just under 1.96 million TEUs of containers.

The amount of transshipments that passed through South Korea en route to a final destination shot up 19.9 percent on-year to some 805,000 TEUs, according to the ministry.

The amount of export-import cargo also rose 2 percent from a year earlier to about 1.17 million TEUs last month.

In the first five months of 2012, local ports processed 9.33 million TEUs of containers, up 6.5 percent from 8.76 million TEUs a year earlier.

The country’s largest port in Busan, 450 kilometers southeast of Seoul, handled 1.55 million TEUs in May, up 9.2 percent from a year earlier, according to the ministry.

Busan was the fifth-largest container handling port in the world after Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shenzhen in May. 

(Yonhap News)