The scientists aboard the icebreaker Araon can never get close enough to the Antarctic ice.
They want the ship to sidle right up to the Thwaites Glacier so they can fly their helicopter-borne radar farther across it. They want the ship to bash its way into the middle of the sea ice so they can place instruments. They want the ship to sail through a “death trap” of an inlet where giant icebergs regularly block the only way in and out.
It is Capt. Kim Gwang-heon’s job to tell them, politely but firmly, no.
There are nearly 40 scientists on this expedition, with dozens of research goals, but ultimately it is Captain Kim, 63, who decides where the Araon goes each day and where it doesn’t. As the ship has zigzagged around the Amundsen Sea over the past few weeks, Captain Kim has kept us ahead of the sea ice and icebergs that the winds are constantly blowing and shifting all around, like tiles being shuffled on a mahjong table.
If his more than 40 years of seafaring experience have taught him anything, it’s humility, even at the helm of an icebreaker as capable as the Araon. “It’s ideal to go around the ice rather than to break through it,” he said.
After all, icebreakers aren’t all-powerful. Their reinforced hulls and strong engines let them plow through ice, but only to a point. It’s up to Captain Kim to determine whether the conditions before him fall within that threshold or beyond it.
Captain Kim’s sights were set on a life at sea ever since he was in high school in the port city of Busan, South Korea. After graduating from Korea Maritime and Ocean University in 1985, he went to work for a shipping company, Pan Ocean. His first time at sea was also his first time out of South Korea.
“I wanted to see the vast world,” said Captain Kim, who stayed with Pan Ocean for nearly three decades.
He began working aboard the Araon in 2014. Today he is generally at sea for six months at a time, with three-month breaks in between. When he is back on land, the first thing he wants to eat is Chinese food. He enjoys hiking with his wife near their home in Busan. They have two grown children.
Captain Kim doesn’t always turn the scientists down. He took the ship in and out of that “death trap” inlet, and punched through plenty of heavy sea ice. Still, with his decades of experience and unflappable mien, the researchers never second-guess his decisions.
It helps that Captain Kim has a superpower: exceptionally good eyesight. Gazing out the panoramic windows of the Araon’s bridge, he is faster than anyone else to spot distant objects, be they a floating buoy or an errant underwater robot.
Captain Kim’s vision is not, in fact, supernatural; he had laser correction surgery 15 years ago. But he acknowledges that eagle eyes are an asset. Being able to scan and interpret the seas quickly is essential, he said, for making snap judgments at the helm.
The Araon’s ice pilot, Chaeho Lim, has another important job. Mr. Lim digests all the information from ice charts, radar soundings, satellite images and weather forecasts and helps Captain Kim make decisions.
Mr. Lim, 51, studied to be an accountant before joining the South Korean Navy. He has worked as an ice pilot since 2017, and now is away from home for eight to nine months of the year, both in Antarctica and in the Arctic.
“The first rule we learn when we embark? Don’t disobey the ice,” Mr. Lim said. “Only enter when it lets you.”
It takes skill and intuition developed over many years, of course, to read the signals from the ice, to know when it beckons and when danger lies ahead.
Mr. Lim is not inclined to believe in disastrous, Shackleton-style endings, even when the winds defy the forecasts and the ship finds itself hemmed in by plate upon plate of frozen sea.
In situations like that, Mr. Lim remembers a line from “Anne of Green Gables”: “I don’t know what lies around the bend, but I’m going to believe that the best does.”
Captain Kim has had some close calls in the ice. He has had to rescue passengers from other ships that ran into trouble. Still, he shares Mr. Lim’s belief that, with the right experience and today’s navigational aids, no spot is too tight to wriggle out of.
“No matter how much ice there is,” he said, “there’s always a path.”
Chang W. Lee contributed reporting, and Jin Yu Young provided translation.
Raymond Zhong reports on climate and environmental issues for The Times.
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