A South Korean container ship has set off on a test commercial voyage from the Arctic to Europe for the first time, a route Seoul wants to explore for commercial use.
The Pan Star ship “Acro” departed from the new port of Busan on Saturday and is scheduled to reach Europe by crossing the Northern Sea Route near the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Bering Sea, stopping at the ports of Felixstowe in the UK, Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and Gdansk in Poland.
This ship, with a capacity of 2,758 containers, carries 837 containers including car parts, chemical products, and a number of empty containers, and its journey will take about 40 to 45 days.
The South Korean government hopes to develop this route to turn the Port of Busan into an important maritime transit hub and turn the Arctic Route into a regular trade route by 2030.
However, environmental groups have warned about the increase in ship traffic in the Arctic, saying that the expansion of shipping could lead to further melting of polar ice and intensifying global warming.
