South Korea sends its icebreaker Araon on an 83-day Arctic mission

South Korea has deployed its only icebreaking research vessel, Araon, on an 83-day Arctic expedition to gather sea-ice, weather and seabed data intended to support safer navigation and future shipping operations. The ship departed on its 17th Arctic research voyage, with work planned across the Bering Sea, the East Siberian Sea, the Chukchi Sea and the central Arctic Ocean.

Araon has a range of 17,000 nautical miles, accommodation for 25 crew and 60 researchers, and capacity for up to 31 TEU of equipment and supplies, and it is designed to break one-metre-thick level ice at three knots. The voyage is the first field campaign under a national programme aimed at developing an Arctic route operating system built on domestic observational data, whose findings will feed artificial-intelligence tools for forecasting sea-ice conditions and identifying navigational risks.

During the mission, researchers will measure the thickness, internal structure and surface roughness of sea ice, recover long-term mooring instruments left behind during the previous expedition, and study the growing inflow of warmer Atlantic water into the Arctic. The programme also includes seabed sediment sampling and seismic surveys to examine long-term environmental change and assess the distribution of gas hydrates, alongside a preliminary survey of an area selected for joint scientific research under an international agreement on Arctic fisheries.