This study discussed the relationship between national shipping policy and the value-added of the Korean shipping industry. It is argued that the national shipping policy, due to relatively low value-added of the shipping industry in Korea, has always failed to take priority to other national industry policies. The study offers a set of evidences for this argument by showing that the shipping industry has been undergoing more sufferings than other industries since the IMF program was implemented in Korea.

For this reason, the study focused on analysing the factors affecting the value-added of the Korean shipping industry in order to devise proper measures for improving its value-added. The result of the analysis shows that capacity of the Korean fleet, shipping revenue, and equity capital are the main determining factors of the industry`s value-added. With this result, the study considers a number of measures to improve the value-added of the Korean shipping industry.