South Korea plans commercial use of northern sea route – business and economy
MOSCOW, May 11 / TASS /. South Korea is considering long-term commercial use of the North Sea Route (NSR), said Lee Sok-bae in an interview with Russian news agencies, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Korea in Russia.
Seoul also believes that the development of road infrastructure will allow it to gain importance in the world, he added.
“The research agencies of the Republic of Korea and Russia are conducting joint studies on how to intensify the exploitation of the Arctic route, and our country is considering the possibility of commercial use of the NSR in a long-term perspective. In particular, Korean companies regard maritime infrastructure and logistics costs as important factors, and we anticipate that the Arctic route can be used more and more intensively, when seaports are equipped to serve ships, that a Adjacent transport network is ready, a sufficient number of ice-class ships are built and, in general, an infrastructure for safe maritime transport is created, â€said the diplomat.
He recalled that since 2013, South Korea had participated five times in pilot projects for the operation of the NSR, taking into account the opportunities it offers to reduce logistics costs for the transport of goods between Asia and Europe as well as transport time.
The Northern Sea Route is the sea route and the main shipping line in the Russian Arctic sector. It stretches along the northern coasts of Russia across the seas of the Arctic Ocean (Barents, Kara, Laptev, Eastern Siberia, Chukchi and Bering Seas). The route consolidates the European and Far Eastern ports of Russia and the navigable mouths of Siberia into a single transport system. The course is 5,600 km from the Kara Strait to Providence Bay.
Russian nuclear company Rosatom is acting as supervisor of the federal Northern Sea Route project. Its objective is to develop the Road and increase its freight turnover to 80 million tonnes in 2024.