The nation’s first-ever deep sea mining robot “MineRo” has successfully completed testing at a depth of one-thousand-370 meters.
 
The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries said Thursday South Korea now possesses the key technology for deep sea commercial mining. It said Minero successfully maneuvered under extreme conditions in waters 130 kilometers off Pohang, Gyeongsang Province.
 
The MineRo is a domestically built deep sea mining robot. It is six meters long, five meters wide and four meters high. It weighs 25 tons in the air and nine tons underwater.
 
The ministry, together with the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology, plans to complete developing technologies for commercial mining of deep sea manganese ores by 2015.