Korea Approves Self-Navigation on a Passenger Ferry for the First Time

Last week we wrote about two Chinese canal ships that will try to steer themselves with containers on board. This week Korea took the next step: an approval for a ferry that carries ordinary passengers.

What was approved. The Korean maritime safety authority, KOMSA, approved the safety assessment for Samsung Heavy Industries' self-navigation system, called SAS, on the passenger ferry Tamnara. The ferry serves Nami Island, a tourist island on a river with no road to the mainland. More than 90% of its visitors arrive by boat. Smart Maritime Network reports this is the first approval of its kind for a passenger ferry in South Korea.

What the system does. It uses radar, GPS and AIS, the system ships use to report their position to each other, to find other boats and obstacles. It judges the risk of collision and suggests a route around it. It can also control the engines and the steering to take the ferry to a set point.

The path to this approval. In December 2025 the same system passed a safety check on the island's car ferry, Nami 51. So Korea started with vehicles and moved to passengers eleven months later. The system will also go on a new ferry, Sequoia, now being built. The island's operator wants to use the data from both ferries as a model for other tourist ferries on Korean rivers and lakes.

What is missing. The most important things. How many crew stay on board. How much of the trip the system steers and how much a person does. Whether the approval has conditions or an end date. And any results from eleven months on the car ferry.

Why it matters. Self-steering is arriving first on short, repeated routes on calm water, exactly as we wrote last week. But this is the first time we see an authority put its name on it for paying passengers. Approvals like this become the pattern other countries copy.

What to watch. Whether KOMSA or the operator publishes how often a person had to take over. That one number says more than the approval itself. [Smart Maritime Network · AiatSea, 8 November]

This story is part of the Maritime AI Digest of 15 November 2026.