It was in the 18th century that the European civilization surged on eastward, influencing its effects upon Korean with result that steamships and shipping by steamships were introduced from Europe and the United States of America. And there emerged in Korea some possibility or embryo of modern shipping. But the modern learning had never any opportunity to be fostered by the government of Korea which fell a sacrifice to the agression of Japan that invaded Korea somewhat later than the Western powers. And the Japanese scholars of social science in the period of the Japanese occupation tried their best to study what was necessary for governing Korea as their colony, neglecting what was not directly related to their colonial exploitation. The history of shipping business is, of course, a special branch or field of the economic history and the documents and records about the shipping of the last peroid of the Ri-dynasty, scattered in China, Japan, U.S.A, Germany, Russia and England, are not easy for us to read extensively, and even those in Korea, treasures in Kyujang-kak (The royal library of the Ri-dynasty), forbidden any perusal for the general readers, mixed with those of politics and foreign policies and written in Chinese characters of half-cursive or cursive handwriting style, are difficult to make out. Besides, broad and deep knowledge about maritime economy, maritime administration, Korean history, science of mercantile marine, Chinese, Japanese and English is indispensable for the study of this history of shipping. Despite of the above reasons, it is peculiar that the various facts about this history of shipping, the historical phenomenon of only about one century ago has been left behing as a completely untroden field of learning in Korea even now. The intention of the author in this treatise is to give a clue to the study of shipping in Korea, discussing positively about Rium-sa, the earliest shipping company in Korea. It was possible through the special help from China which wanted to curry favor with Korea that Rium-sa was established and the details and date of the establish. <스캔이 잘려서 내용입력 확인 불가함> ment as well as the details of the second-hand steamships of Riun-sa which were purchased from foreign countries with the foreign loans, are described in this treatise. Riun-sa(name of the shipping company of the Korean government), as its name suggests, had its structure of enterprise and modern steamships as production means, but it was administered by governmental officials inefficiently with any improvement or innovation. And its courses of navigation were limited to the Korean coastlines and its business was mainly to transport the tribute-rice from the southern parts of Korea. The shipping, though weak in its base, reached anyhow to the stage of a maritime enterprise, with the possibility of further development, but, at last, it withered away, by dint of the Japanese invasion into Korea, after only 2 years since its budding under the too strong foreign influences, unable to told its own direction and track independently of politics.