SEOUL - Chaos in the Middle East is adding incentive and urgency for some trading nations to navigate both ice floes and geopolitical competition at the top of the world.
The first South Korean container ship to reach Europe via the Arctic arrived in Felixstowe, England over the weekend, a day after Houthi rebels seized control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, putting pressure on yet another global trade chokepoint.
Asian nations, especially China and South Korea, both of which depend heavily on maritime trade routes, including the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea, began pilot voyages more than a decade ago to find routes to Europe and the Middle East which were faster and less vulnerable to chokepoints. The ongoing U.S. war on Iran has added impetus to those efforts.
India says it is planning its first cargo ship voyage via the Northern Sea Route (NSR), an east-west shipping corridor along Russia's Arctic coastline, next year. Japan's Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology is building its first Arctic research icebreaker and preparing to send it to explore polar waters as early as next year.
The contest distantly echoes early modern history, such as 15th-16th century Europe, when Spain and Portugal and later England and the Netherlands vied for control of sea lanes, ports and access to resources to gain the upper hand against rival states.
In a social media post, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung congratulated the captain and crew of the Panstar Acro ship for opening a historic route. The ship took advantage of late summer temperatures when ice is scarcest to make the 45-day round trip voyage, starting in Busan, via the NSR, and stopping in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and Gdansk, Poland.
Climate change breaks the ice
Due to global warming in Arctic waters, "we're seeing the surface area covered by the ice in September, much lower than it used to be. We're losing an average of about 10 to 15% per decade," says Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, CO.
With pack ice covering most of its waters, Meier adds, much of the Arctic was previously unnavigable without icebreakers — ships with reinforced bows to cut through ice. But now, "we are seeing a lot more people going up there and it's small sailboats and cruise ships as well as commercial vehicles. So it's becoming a busier place."
But it's no trade superhighway yet. Insurance costs for Arctic shipping are high, and the window of opportunity when ice is at its minimum is short, from late summer to early fall.
"I think what's significant," says geographic studies professor Frédéric Lassere at Laval University in Quebec, Canada, "is that for the first time, there are shipping companies that are trying to implement regular container services across the Arctic," and betting that it could eventually be profitable.
For now, Lassere says, most shipping companies are reacting to Middle East risks by taking the longer but more predictable route around southern Africa.
Geopolitical competition intensifies
Meanwhile, geopolitics and Russia's war with Ukraine have constrained South Korea's Arctic ambitions.
Russia views the North Sea Route as part of its domestic waters. It requires ships to get a permit to transit them and reserves the right to require the use of its state-owned nuclear-powered icebreakers. Those icebreakers are under Western sanctions due to Russia's war with Ukraine.
Seo Hyun-kyo, principal research specialist at the Korea Polar Research Institute, argues that South Korea is managing to balance between Russia and the West.
"Our security allies are the U.S. and the EU," he says. "I understand that we are proceeding while strictly adhering to prior consultations with them" about shipping through the Arctic.
China has declared a "no limits" strategic partnership with Russia, and opposes Western sanctions against it.
"Unlike the current situation," Seo adds, "where China cooperates with Russia without broad international consensus, we intend to pursue a different path."
But Choi Subeom, Secretary-General of the Korea Arctic Shipping Association, is critical of the fact that, although the Panstar Acro ship was sailing through Russian waters, South Korea's government "put far more effort into ensuing no issues arose with the U.S." than with Russia, whose waters the vessel transited.
"Experts like us were quite dissatisfied with that approach," Choi says, because "it was seen as diplomatic behavior that was overly subservient to the U.S."
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the work of the Arctic Council, which includes Russia, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Canada, ground to a halt, as did international environmental and climate cooperation.
Meanwhile, NATO officials say that Russia and NATO have stepped up Arctic military exercises and restored military bases that became obsolete with the end of the Cold War. According to them, the Arctic remains important as the shortest route for missiles and bombers to travel between Russia and America, while its ice caps still shield submarines from detection.
And the Trump administration has floated, then disavowed, the possibility of acquiring Greenland by force.
For roughly three decades since the end of the Cold War, the idea of the Arctic as an "exceptional zone" of international cooperation persisted.
Despite the prospect of growing trade along Arctic maritime routes, that exceptionalism appears to some analysts to be increasingly unrealistic.
NPR's Se Eun Gong contributed to this report in Seoul.
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