Korea’s shipbuilders continued to lead the global market in the first half of the year despite a large drop in overseas orders caused by sluggish economic conditions, the government said Thursday.

In the January-June period, the world’s total orders for new ships plunged 58 percent from the same period a year earlier to 8.77 million compensated gross tons, a drop largely caused by “years of oversupply and the European financial woes,” the Ministry of Knowledge Economy said in a press release.

Korea reaped orders for 3.31 million CGTs during the cited period. The figure represents less than half of the 8.92 million CGTs the country acquired during the same period last year, but is still the single largest share globally at 37.7 percent of the total for this year.

Korea was closely followed by China, the world’s second-largest shipbuilding nation, whose global market share rose slightly from 32.1 percent in 2011 to 34.5 percent in the first half.

However, the gap between Korea and China widened significantly when measured in the value of their orders, the ministry said, as Korea’s 3.31 million CGT worth of ships are valued at $14 billion while China’s orders, totaling 3.03 million CGTs, are worth only $5.9 billion.

“There is not a great difference between the two countries in terms of total weight of their orders as China continues to win most of the orders for large bulk carriers and container vessels, but there is a great difference in terms of monetary value of their orders as South Korea continues to win most of the orders for advanced, expensive ships,” the ministry said.

In the first half, Korea won both of the world’s only orders for a floating, production, storage and offloading ship and a LNG floating, storage, re-gasification unit, worth a total of just under $2.3 billion. It also won seven out of eight orders placed in the world for drill ships and 15 out of 16 orders for LNG carriers.

The volume of deliveries by South Korean shipbuilders in the first half came to an estimate of 8.6 million CGTs, showing little change from the same period last year, as it takes about three years for a drop in new orders to start affecting the number of ships in stock, the ministry said. (Yonhap News)