By Kim Hyun-cheol
Staff Reporter
With France and Singapore newly included, the express mail service (EMS) offered by Korea Post has expanded its global network for special deliveries to connect 176,000 post offices in 10 countries, the nation's postal service said Wednesday.
At a CEO conference of the Kahala Posts Group (KPG) in Kyoto, Japan, members agreed to accept the two countries into the global postal alliance. With the inclusion, customers of the KPG countries can receive 100-percent compensation for any delay in EMS deliveries to and from the new members. The service will be available next year.
The KPG was formed six years ago under an initiative from Korea, aiming to provide door-to-door express mail and air parcel delivery services through a reliable and technologically advanced network.
Also included in the network besides Korea and the two new members are Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, the United States and Spain. The service is growing by nearly 10 percent in the amount of mail and parcels. A total of 25 million pieces of mail and parcels were delivered within the group last year.
Korea Post said the expansion will benefit more customers including small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
``This is a great achievement celebrating the 30th anniversary of the EMS service in Korea," Korea Post President Namgung Min said. "With the network expansion, SMEs trading with France and Singapore will be able to reduce distribution costs greatly through our services."
Also during the meeting, Namgung had a discussion with his Japanese counterpart Norio Kitamura on the introduction of a sea-carried express service.
The new service could be a ``blue ocean'' in the business as both countries have advanced transportation routes, he said.
``Thanks to high customer satisfaction, the EMS service to the two neighboring countries is expected to further grow by more than 20 percent in the future," Namgung predicted.