South Korea's urban air mobility program enters demonstration phase

South Korea's urban air mobility (UAM) program will enter its demonstration phase next year.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said the "K-UAM Safety Operations System Demonstration Technology Development" project has cleared a national research and development preliminary feasibility review and will be launched in full in 2027.

The project follows the "K-UAM Safety Operations System Core Technology Development" initiative that began in 2024. Rather than developing individual technologies in isolation, the new project aims to integrate and verify technologies for traffic management, flight information, weather services and vertiports in actual operating environments — advancing them into a safety operations system ready for future commercial service.

The ministry will oversee safety operations technology development overall, while the Korea Meteorological Administration handles weather observation and forecasting technology and Ulsan takes charge of building the demonstration environment.

The ministry plans to pursue initial UAM commercial services in 2028 — covering regional connections, tourism, airport links and public healthcare — while simultaneously laying the regulatory, infrastructure and workforce foundations for commercialization. Ongoing demonstration and refinement through this research and development effort is intended to secure the technological groundwork for UAM to enter urban airspace by 2032.

Park Jun-hyung, director general of the ministry's Mobility and Automotive Bureau, called the project "an important turning point that connects UAM technology development to actual operations and services." He added that the ministry would "work closely with relevant agencies to prepare for initial commercialization in 2028 without delay, and pursue a phased approach through to urban entry."