The purpose of this study is to identify the social issues discussed in Korea regarding Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS), the most advanced ICT field in the shipbuilding industry, and to suggest policy implications. In recent years, it has become important to reflect social issues of public interest in the policymaking process. For this reason, an increasing number of studies use media data and social media to identify public opinion. In this study, we collected 2,843 domestic media articles related to MASS from 2017 to 2022, when MASS was officially discussed at the International Maritime Organization, and analyzed them using text mining techniques. Through term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) analysis, major keywords such as 'shipbuilding,' 'shipping,' 'US,' and 'HD Hyundai' were derived. For LDA topic modeling, we selected eight topics with the highest coherence score (-2.2) and analyzed the main news for each topic. According to the combined analysis of five years, the topics '1. Technology integration of the shipbuilding industry' and '3. Shipping industry in the post-COVID-19 era' received the most media attention, each accounting for 16%. Conversely, the topic '5. MASS pilotage areas' received the least media attention, accounting for 8 percent. Based on the results of the study, the implications for policy, society, and international security are as follows. First, from a policy perspective, the government should consider the current situation of each industry sector and introduce MASS in stages and carefully, as they will affect the shipbuilding, port, and shipping industries, and a radical introduction may cause various adverse effects. Second, from a social perspective, while the positive aspects of MASS are often reported, there are also negative issues such as cybersecurity issues and the loss of seafarer jobs, which require institutional development and strategic commercialization timing. Third, from a security perspective, MASS are expected to change the paradigm of future maritime warfare, and South Korea is promoting the construction of a maritime unmanned system-based power, but it emphasizes the need for a clear plan and military leadership to secure and develop the technology. This study has academic and policy implications by shedding light on the multidimensional political and social issues of MASS through news data analysis, and suggesting implications from national, regional, strategic, and security perspectives beyond legal and institutional discussions.
