MOSCOW, May 11. /TASS/. South Korea is considering the commercial use of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) in the long term, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Korea to Russia, Mr. Lee Sok-bae said in an interview with Russian news agencies.
Seoul also believes that the development of the routes’ infrastructure will enable it to become more important in the world, he added.
"Research agencies of the Republic of Korea and Russia are conducting joint studies on how to intensify the operation 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 consider the shipping infrastructure and logistics costs to be important factors, and we predict that the Arctic route can be used more and more intensively, when seaports are equipped to service ships, a network of adjacent transportation means is ready, a sufficient number of ice-class ships is built and, in general, an infrastructure for safe maritime transport is created," the diplomat said.
He recalled that since 2013 South Korea had participated in pilot projects for the operation of the NSR five times, taking into account the opportunities it provides to reduce logistics costs for the transport of goods between Asia and Europe as well as transportation time.
The Northern Sea Route is the shipping route and the main sea line in the Russian Arctic sector. It stretches along northern coasts of Russia across the seas of the Arctic Ocean (Barents, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, Chukchi and Bering seas). The route consolidates European and Far Eastern ports of Russia and navigable river mouths in Siberia in a single transport system. The route length is 5,600 km from the Kara Strait to the Providence Bay.
Russia’s nuclear corporation Rosatom acts as a supervisor of the Northern Sea Route Federal Project. Its goal is to develop the Route and increase its freight turnover to 80 mln tonnes in 2024.