Jeju Launches National Drone Delivery Testbed for Public Services, Hallasan Park
Jeju Island has been selected as a drone demonstration city under a national program aimed at proving and scaling autonomous delivery and other drone-enabled public services by 2026. The plan includes delivering daily necessities to residents on Jeju’s subsidiary islets—Gapado, Maraedo, and Biyangdo—during hours when ships are not operating.
The project titled K-Drone Delivery Commercialization targets the islets, with operations slated from 2:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on Wednesdays through Saturdays. Deliveries will be coordinated with the public delivery app Meokkkaebi, and the program intends to expand participating merchants and product lists this year. An automated, unmanned station system will also be introduced to handle takeoff, landing, and loading without human intervention.
A rooftop hub at Seogwipo City’s Western Public Health Center will serve as a base for distributing general medicines and medical consumables to Gapado and Mara-do health clinics. The broader Jeju initiative also ties into the island’s Jeju Value Care program, which plans to deliver lunch boxes to elderly residents and collect reusable containers.
In addition to delivery, Jeju’s drone project includes a separate public-services initiative for Hallasan National Park on the island. Here, VTOL aircraft and drones will be used to create automated patrol routes along both popular and untraveled trails, with a long-range LTE-based communications network enabling remote operation. In the first half of each year, officials will complete a communication-quality map, confirm safe flight corridors, and use AI to analyze drone footage to locate people in need of rescue or to monitor for illegal trail use in real time.
The plan also envisions a drone-based tourism service for hikers who find Hallasan ascent challenging, using motion chairs and virtual reality devices that integrate with live drone video feeds to provide a safer, assisted viewing experience.
Jeju Province Innovation and Industry Director Kim Nam-jin said the island would continuously improve its drone-delivery efforts to support safe, innovative public services on Hallasan and to develop services tailored to local conditions for commercialization. The package of projects underscores the government’s push to test and scale drone-enabled logistics, public safety, and accessibility both on land and in protected areas.
The Jeju program matters to U.S. readers for several reasons. It serves as a real-world test bed for autonomous delivery and remote public services in geographically dispersed regions, illustrating how urban and rural needs can be addressed through drones, automated stations, and AI-assisted monitoring. If scalable, such models could influence disaster-response logistics, supply-chain resilience, and rural healthcare in the United States. The use of public-private partnerships, standardized communication links (LTE-based networks), and safety-focused patrols in a national park context also offer potential reference points for U.S. policymakers and industry as they evaluate regulations, investment, and cross-sector collaboration in drone ecosystems.