Passenger and cargo ferry services between Dalian in China's northeastern Liaoning Province and Incheon in South Korea resumed on Friday after they were suspended in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Liaoning Port Group.

The first ferry to sail the route since the suspension was a Flying Dragon "ro-ro", or roll-on, roll-off ship, which left Incheon on Friday afternoon carrying 300 passengers, arriving in Dalian early Saturday morning.

Operated by the ROK's Dain Ferry Co., Ltd., the Flying Dragon can carry 510 passengers and 145 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of cargo containers. The crossing takes approximately 16 hours, and three round trips are scheduled per week.

After the resumption of the ferry service, the ship is expected to sail 300 times and carry more than 100,000 passengers each year.

Since it began operations in 1995, the ship has transported more than 1.75 million passengers and 430,000 TEUs of containers, becoming a key personnel and cargo transport channel between China and the ROK.