From Seizures to Strategy: Reverse Engineering the South America-Asia Cocaine Trade

Unpacking a Multibillion-Dollar Route

On May 10, 2025, South Korea’s Busan Regional Customs made a stunning discovery when they uncovered 720 kilograms of cocaine concealed aboard a containership arriving at Busan New Port. Acting swiftly on intelligence provided by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Korean authorities boarded the Malta-flagged vessel, which had sailed in from South America. The cocaine haul, valued at more than $254 million, was enough to supply an estimated 24 million doses, marking a significant strike against the global narcotics trade.

This seizure wasn’t an isolated incident. It was the second major cocaine bust in South Korea in just over a month, raising serious questions: Was South Korea the final destination or just a stop along a broader trafficking route? 

While the vessel’s name wasn’t disclosed in official reports, key details, like its flag, arrival date, and voyage pattern, offered crucial clues. By cross-referencing these indicators in Windward’s maritime intelligence platform, we traced the ship and unraveled the next layer of this unfolding investigation.

Identifying the Vessel: Patterns Behind the Profile

By piecing together key details, such as the vessel’s Maltese flag, arrival time at Busan, and prior port calls in South America, we were able to pinpoint the ship involved in the May 10 cocaine seizure. The vessel in question is a 366-meter container ship whose identity aligned precisely with the intelligence indicators. 

Our investigation revealed the following details:

• Ownership and management: the vessel is owned by a Hong Kong-based entity, while its beneficial ownership and commercial operations are currently controlled by a French company. This change in beneficial ownership occurred in May 2024.
• Risk indicators: while the vessel’s risk profile is generally low, it has shown subtle behavioral anomalies such as course deviations and unexplained loitering. These patterns, while not definitive, often serve as early warning signs for illicit activity.
• Recent port calls: the vessel’s recent journey paints a revealing picture. Between March and May 2025, it made stops at:
  • Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico (March 26)
  • Buenaventura, Colombia (April 3 and April 15)
  • Callao, Peru (April 8)
  • Posorja, Ecuador (April 12)
  • Busan, South Korea (May 8)

Notably, the vessel’s arrival in Busan aligned precisely with the date of the cocaine seizure. Following the inspection, the ship continued its voyage, heading towards China.

While the vessel’s overall operational pattern fits within the typical profile of a large container ship, balancing time spent at sea, in port, and waiting area, its South American port calls and subtle risk indicators make this case a clear example of how routine maritime operations can be exploited for sophisticated smuggling activity.

As noted, this seizure follows a previous case just weeks earlier, in April 2025. With two major busts merely weeks apart, a critical question emerges: do the vessels share a common pattern or operational playbook that reveals a broader smuggling strategy?

The April Seizure: Building a Pattern of Risk

Less than six weeks earlier, on April 2, 2025, customs at Okgye Port in southeast South Korea announced what was, at the time, the country’s largest-ever drug bust – one tonne of cocaine concealed aboard a bulk carrier arriving from South America. 

By applying a similar investigative approach and searching for bulk carriers that made port calls in South America before docking at Okgye, we identified a likely suspect using Windward’s Maritime AI™ intelligence platform: the LUNITA, a 190-meter bulk carrier registered under the Norwegian flag. The LUNITA has been classified as a low-risk vessel since August 2024. However, it recorded an anomalous loitering incident that raised some concerns. Our findings were further corroborated by using Windward’s Gen AI virtual agent for adverse media analysis, which uncovered multiple open-source reports linking the LUNITA to the April drug bust.

This second case reinforces an emerging pattern: large commercial vessels, flagged under different registries, are making port calls in South America and subsequently docking in South Korean ports, while concealing massive quantities of cocaine in their holds.

This method is not limited to the South Korean context. It reflects a broader narcotics trafficking network that spans multiple continents. According to research by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), narcotics arriving in China from South America predominantly originate from Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. These countries are the primary cocaine-producing nations in the Andean region.

After departing South America, these shipments often cross the Atlantic and Indian Oceans before reaching East and Southeast Asia. By embedding these illicit cargos into routine commercial traffic along major shipping lanes, traffickers exploit the very systems that support global trade.

The South America-to-Asia route identified in both recent cases, passing through  Mexico, Ecuador, Panama, and Chile, matches this trafficking model. It serves as a reminder that the challenge goes beyond tracking single vessels. This is a systemic issue that requires coordinated enforcement, advanced detection tools, and proactive risk strategies to disrupt.

Two Cases, One Smuggling Blueprint

The back-to-back cocaine seizures in South Korea reveal more than isolated incidents. They highlight a repeatable trafficking model that can be systematically investigated and disrupted. By reverse engineering the movements of the vessels involved – tracing their port calls, voyage patterns, and operational behavior – a clear method emerges to proactively detect similar smuggling operations.

The key finding is that both vessels, the container ship intercepted in May and the bulk carrier busted in April, followed a similar route. Each departed from South American ports, crossed the Pacific Ocean, and made stops in South Korea before continuing to China. This South America-to-Asia route stands out as a critical pathway for transnational cocaine trafficking.

With this insight, we searched Windward’s Maritime AI™ intelligence platform for vessels that followed the same suspicious pattern during May 2025. The results were telling:

• 14 vessels made port calls in South America during that period and then transited the Pacific toward China
• Of those, 3 vessels also stopped in South Korea en route to China, mirroring the route taken by the ships involved in the seizures

This isn’t just about catching individual ships. It’s about identifying the playbook traffickers are using. When authorities can spot the broader modus operandi, one built on consistent vessel types, geographic patterns, and behaviors, they can proactively target ships before illicit cargo makes landfall. 

The pattern is consistent and actionable. It involves:

• Bulk carriers and container vessels
• Port calls in South America
• Transits across the Pacific
• Stops in China, with interim calls in South Korea

This blueprint now serves as the foundation for more precise inspections, early warnings, and international collaboration. Isolated busts become part of a wider maritime counter-narcotics strategy, driven by data, powered by AI, and focused on prevention.

Turning Insights Into Action

What We Now Know

The recent record-breaking cocaine seizures in South Korea are not isolated incidents, and they revealed a repeatable smuggling pattern exploiting the global cargo trade. Both vessels followed nearly identical routes, originating in South America and making stops in South Korea en route to China. 

Windward’s Maritime AI™ platform mapped this trajectory across 14 vessels in May 2025, 3 of which made similar port calls in South Korea. These aren’t coincidences, they’re indicators of a system traffickers are actively using.

This pattern provides a clear opportunity for law enforcement and compliance teams to shift gears from reacting to tips after the fact to anticipating risk using real-time data and behavioral models.

Why It Matters Now

• Scale matters: the number of vessels following this route shows the size and coordination of the trafficking effort
• Timing matters: two major busts in under six weeks confirm this is a live, ongoing threat
• Insight matters: with the ability to pinpoint suspicious behaviors and voyage patterns, authorities have what they need to act faster and smarter

Next Steps for Authorities and Stakeholders

• • Prioritize vessels that mirror this risk profile, especially those transiting from South America with interim stops in South Korea and China
  • Use risk signals like anomalous loitering or course deviations as triggers for deeper inspections and escalations

• Implement a proactive, pattern-based monitoring approach that integrates maritime domain awareness, AI-driven analysis, and collaboration between customers, navies, and intelligence teams

This isn’t about isolated seizures, it’s about systemic disruptions. Windward’s tools are already helping stakeholders identify risks, connect behavioral dots, and make strategic decisions. The data is there. The patterns are clear. Now is the time to act on them.  

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