South Korea to map out national framework for autonomous shipping

April 30, 2025, by Sara Kosmajac

Reinforcing the drive to ‘modernize’ and digitize its shipping industry, South Korea is set to establish a long-term strategy, aiming to bring autonomous vessel technology into commercial use.

Illustration purposes only. Source: Busan Port Authority

According to the country’s Ministry of Ocean and Fisheries (MOF), the plan encompasses a decade-long framework pertaining to the engineering of technologies deemed ‘critical’ to build autonomous ships, ensuring that the South Korean maritime transportation industry can keep up with the technology, fostering professional talent, and revising related national policies where needed.

Minister Kang Do-hyung has noted that MOF will work together with the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) to turn the vision into reality within a year. He added that South Korea intends to collaborate with international partners, as well, with the goal of helping to institute a global regulatory framework on the design, building and operations of autonomous vessels.

“Autonomous ships, based on advanced digital technologies such as AI, will be a turning point for the maritime logistics industry, contributing to safety and carbon reductions. We will step up our response and cooperation to ensure that South Korea’s technological capabilities and experience are fully reflected in the IMO’s ongoing efforts to establish standards for autonomous vessel technology,” Minister Kang highlighted.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) aims to finalize a unified code for maritime autonomous surface vessels (MASS) by 2032. As informed, the MASS code is set to define technical, operational and regulatory standards for ships that operate with varying degrees of autonomy, ranging from those with automated processes and decision support to fully unmanned units.

The framework is vital for shipping, a sector where a lack of global regulations represents a major barrier.

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At the end of last year, MOF and MOTIE revealed that the government had greenlit the Autonomous Ship Act, a “landmark” piece of legislation aimed at promoting the development, demonstration and commercialization of MASS. The act entered into force at the beginning of January 2025. This positioned South Korea as one of the first nations in the industry to create a framework of this kind.

Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Ahn Deok-geun has elaborated that the MASS policy and the long-term strategy are envisioned to ‘work in sync’ and that the Ministry has plans underway to work together with MOF and run a technical council on autonomous vessels in order to support the entire lifecycle of units of this type, from technology creation to commercialization.

“We plan to reflect the results of industry-led demonstrations in our technology development policies by leveraging past regulatory sandbox outcomes and the new demonstration exemptions under the Autonomous Ship Act and respond to this emerging market through a unified private-public approach,” Minister Ahn commented.

Within the private sector, it is worth noting that in November 2024, shipbuilding major HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (HD HHI) said that it had commenced a collision avoidance and remote control maritime demonstration of autonomous ships.

As divulged, HD HHI installed a navigation system on an 8,000 TEU boxship built at its Ulsan yard to autonomously avoid collisions. At the time, the shipbuilder said that it would control the speed and direction of the demonstration vessel remotely from Seongnam, Gyeonggi-do, which is over 300 kilometers away from Ulsan.

HD HHI’s project was hailed as a “big step forward”, given that previously, it was impossible to test autonomous operations due to the lack of inspection protocols for autonomous navigation systems and the absence of legal provisions allowing shore-based mariners to intervene during remote control.

What is more, in March of that same year, a group of researchers from the National Korea Maritime & Ocean University crafted a new control method that they said could optimize autonomous vessel navigation. The solution was said to work by taking into account the real wave loads acting on a ship, to enable effective planning and control of MASS at sea.