South Korea’s first icebreaker, the Araon, has begun a scientific research exploration in another country’s exclusive economic zone for the first time since its launch in 2009.

U.S., German and Japanese researchers and members of the Korea Polar Research Institute drilled three holes in a sedimentary region near a continental shelf in waters north of the U.S. state of Alaska.
 
The research is being conducted to acquire geoscience knowledge about maritime deposits and to predict climate change. The Araon will research continental shelves in Alaska and the Chukchi Sea to find how the maritime environment has changed over the past 15-thousand years in the Arctic and understand the formation of glaciers in the Western Arctic Sea during the Ice Age.

The South Korean icebreaker will travel to the Beaufort Sea next month and participate in a South Korea-Canada and U.S. joint exploration mission to find if gas hydrates, a next-generation energy source, are buried in the Arctic. The resource exploration will be carried out in Canada’s exclusive economic zone.