South Korean seaports reported a slight uptick in cargo traffic in July from a year earlier, the government said Monday.

The amount of cargo handled at the country's seaports stood at 113.2 million tons last month, up 1.4 percent from the same month last year, according to the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs.

The volume of ore and machinery processed by local ports grew 9. 9 percent and 9.8 percent, respectively, over the cited period. The figures for automobiles and bituminous coal dropped 6.8 percent and 0.1 percent, respectively.

The amount of import-export cargo rose 1.9 percent year-on-year to some 1.19 million twenty-foot-equivalent units (TEUs), while the amount of transshipment cargo grew a mere 0.4 percent.

"The growth of transshipment cargo slowed last month due to various factors, including a global economic downturn and China's economic growth slowdown," the ministry explained in a statement.

The country's largest port in Busan, southeast of Seoul, processed 1.45 million TEUs last month, up 1 percent from the same period last year.