Hanjin Shipping has torn up the charter of a Seaspan containership at the heart of a US dispute.

The move comes shortly after a Seaspan executive said the company has no more exposure to the South Korean liner operator, which is undergoing a court-supervised restructuring.

"We're out of Hanjin now," said chief operating officer Peter Curtis at a Vancouver press briefing without explaining further.

A lawyer for the South Korean liner operator said in an email to a US creditor that Hanin has handed back the 4,590-teu Seaspan Efficiency (built 2003), according to filings with the US Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey.

"I was informed this morning that the foreign representative terminated the charter for the Seaspan Efficiency on October 15, 2016," wrote Cole Schotz lawyer Ilana Volkov, referring to Hanjin's trustee in South Korea.

The ship is one of three in New York-listed Seaspan's core fleet on charter to Hanjin, in addition to four vessels that joint venture Grand China Intermodal Investments has on charter to the South Korean company.

The Seaspan Efficiency is expected to be scrapped.

As TradeWinds has reported, lawyers for bunker supplier OceanConnect filed an arrest lawsuit in a federal court in New York last week in an effort to arrest the ship once it came off charter and was no longer protected by the shield Hanjin's South Korean restructuring proceedings.

But vessel tracking data show that the Seaspan Efficiency has left US waters.

OceanConnect's lawyers said in court papers that the it Hanjin's lawyers used "deception" by failing to inform them of the charter termination before the ship left port.

"The Seaspan Efficiency is now well on its way to be scrapped, and Oceanconnect Marine Inc is left without any recourse to enforce its maritime lien in the amount of at least $837,338.76, despite having to incur significant attorneys’ fees in order to attempt to enforce its maritime lien rights," wrote the lawyers at Simms Showers and Wasserman, Jurista & Stolz.

Efforts to reach Hanjin's New Jersey lawyer were not immediately successful.

The status of Seaspan's other ships on charter to Hanjin is not addressed in the court filings.

Amit Mehrotra, a shipping analyst for Deutsche Bank, was unworried about the cancellation of the Seaspan Efficiency charter, since the Hanjin contracts represent a fraction of Seaspan's earnings before interest, depreciation, taxes and amortisation.

"You’re talking about 5% of the Ebidta of ha company that is generating a lot of Ebitda to begin with, so I’m not overly concerned," he said.