On Hanjin @ Flexport.

This week Hanjin, the world’s 7th-largest ocean carrier, failed to reach terms with its creditors, and started down the path to bankruptcy. The company’s primary creditor, who refused to renegotiate terms with the carrier, was the Korean Development Bank (KDB), a government agency in a country with a long history of intervening in the economy to support an export-led growth strategy.
Why would KDB suddenly allow a company that supports the activities of virtually all Korean exporters to fail in dramatic fashion? There must be more to this than meets the eye. Let’s investigate.

Read more & WSJ article.

The shipper has a debt of $5.5b … and people complain about “free shipping”…. Any way, the South Korean government will decide to “bail out” a company or not, it will go bust if it doesn’t. Hanjin has been unprofitable for the last 4 years or so, global downturn is the reasons folks are tossing around.