Vololand CEO Sungho Ahn Receives “2025 Proud Innovative Korean Award” for Advancing Drone Technology and Localization

Sungho Ahn, CEO of Vololand Co., Ltd., has been honored with the “2025 Proud Innovative Korean Award,” jointly hosted by Monthly Korean and Sports Chosun.

The second-half 2025 recipients include influential figures representing major industries across South Korea, including the Chairman of Samsung Electronics. Among them, CEO Ahn was recognized for his positive and transformative contributions to the advancement of drone components and core technologies within the rapidly growing Korean drone industry.

Vololand was selected as the lead organization for the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport’s 2025 Drone Commercialization Support Program, and recently launched its self-developed drone flight controller series into the domestic market, now supplying more than 20 Korean drone manufacturers. Notably, Vololand’s flight controller NarinFC is built without any Chinese or Taiwanese components, and has already been deployed in real-world operations across Korea.

This direction reflects the company’s strategic commitment to reducing dependency on Chinese supply chains—in alignment with global trends and U.S. industrial policy—and to establishing a fully independent domestic manufacturing ecosystem.

Vololand’s successful high-altitude drone delivery operations in Ganwoljae are now being used as reference datasets for diverse testbeds both in Korea and abroad, demonstrating scalability for military and disaster-response missions. The company has also secured a solid foundation of certifications and intellectual property, including ISO 9001, 14001, and 45001, official registration as an information and communications construction business, and more than 20 patents.

From core drone components to complete aircraft and drone stations, Vololand develops and designs all technologies in-house. The company is currently advancing multiple drone-station platforms, including automatic charging stations, battery-swap stations, and tower-type multi-stations, enabling applications ranging from mountain rescue to logistics delivery. Through collaboration with a major Korean logistics corporation, Vololand has also laid the groundwork for commercial drone-delivery operations.

Looking outward, Vololand is preparing to export Korean-manufactured drone components and agricultural drones with the United States as its primary target market. The company plans to commercialize at least three agricultural drone models by 2026, customized for North American farming environments, and is concurrently undergoing FCC-level certification and military-grade reliability testing. Expansion to Europe and Southeast Asia is also under consideration, together with the development of a cloud-based integrated drone-control platform.

Guided by a vision to establish complete space, equipment, and platform infrastructure by 2026, Vololand is evolving into a total drone-industry platform company—internalizing both hardware and software instead of relying on partial assembly. With a firm goal of surpassing DJI through superior technological innovation, Vololand continues to accelerate its growth through partnerships with U.S. agricultural equipment distributors and other global partners.

Believing that self-reliant technology is equivalent to industrial sovereignty, Vololand adheres to its philosophy of “designed in Korea” for every core component. CEO Ahn stresses that continuous government demonstration projects are essential for the drone industry to mature: rather than one-time R&D funding, building an ecosystem and generating market demand is the true key to nurturing national competitiveness.

Vololand seeks to compete not through low-cost bidding, but through fair and decisive technological excellence. Its identity as “the leader of drone-component localization” is not aspirational—it is an executable reality. And that progress is shaping the future of Korea’s drone industry.