Yonhap announced South Korea's plans to launch a container ship on the NSR in August.

South Korea intends to send a container ship on a trial voyage along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) from Busan to Rotterdam at the end of August. This was reported by the Yonhap news agency on July 16.

"A container ship with a capacity of 2,700 twenty-foot equivalents (TEU) <...> will depart from Busan at the end of next month and make a round trip to Rotterdam. The round—trip flight is expected to take 40-45 days," the agency reports.

The completion of the test flight is scheduled for September. The container ship will be loaded at 1300 TEU. The crew of the vessel will be joined by sailors with experience sailing in polar waters, including the former captain of the South Korean research icebreaker Araon.

According to Yonhap, the Ministry of Oceanology and Fisheries of the Republic of Korea plans to gradually increase the number of trial flights on the Arctic route. In the future, the agency expects to establish regular communication for container ships between South Korea and Europe in the summer, when navigation in the Arctic Ocean remains open.

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The new multimodal route was Russia's response to external pressure

Igor Sechin, Executive Secretary of the Commission under the President of the Russian Federation for the development strategy of the fuel and energy complex and environmental safety, head of Rosneft, noted on June 6 that the NSR is able to provide world trade with the necessary transport solutions against the background of risks for traditional logistics routes.