By: Jiarui (Rachel) Lin, 2025/12/18
KING GEORGE ISLAND, Antarctica — [June 28th, 2025] (reported Dec. 18) — A whirr of a single prop plane. A magenta streak in the sky. From a distance, these gradually coalesce into Whiskey Tango, the beloved Cessna 182Q of a teenage pilot named Ethan Guo.
Starting in late June, as part of the last leg in his multipart international journey across the world, Guo flew Whiskey Tango from the southern tip of South America through the Drake Passage into the isolated continent known as Antarctica.
When he finally landed on a remote Antarctic island, the greeting that awaited him was his prompt arrest. The island he landed on was King George Island, home to a Chilean military base. Chilean authorities detained Guo, alleging that his landing was unauthorized since he deviated from his original flight plan, which did not include landing on the island.
From his perspective, all Guo wanted to do was inspire others to make a difference. After learning about a recent cancer diagnosis in the family, Guo was inspired to make a monumental solo expedition to fly across all seven continents in an effort to raise money for St. Jude’s. He has documented his journey on social media, where his Instagram has millions of followers. Guo had already flown to Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas, making stops in nearly sixty countries. He had one last stop: Antarctica.
Covered almost entirely in ice, Antarctica is the coldest, driest, and windiest place on Earth. With a population level that is technically zero, there is no real need for any governance or a legal system. This has raised important questions regarding the detention: how can an individual be detained and subject to laws if Antarctica has neither immigration law nor due process law in the conventional sense?
Supporters of the existing framework point to a treaty signed more than half a century ago. The Antarctic Treaty, later expanded into the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), was signed in December 1959 at the height of the Cold War. Its purpose was to prevent conflict on the continent by freezing existing territorial claims and prohibiting new ones, aiming to keep Antarctica demilitarized and reserved for peaceful activity. The treaty’s architects sought to preserve a fragile geopolitical balance, assuming the continent’s status would remain largely unchanged.
Had Guo landed anywhere else in the world, the legal consequences might have been clearer. An unscheduled landing could place him under the immigration and customs laws of the territory he entered, potentially resulting in detention or deportation. Antarctica, however, occupies a far more ambiguous legal position.
That ambiguity is embedded in Article VIII of the ATS. While the article specifies jurisdiction over “observers,” “scientific personnel,” and their staff, it places “all other persons” under the jurisdiction of their country of nationality for acts committed in Antarctica. As a private individual unaffiliated with any national scientific program, Guo falls into this residual category, leaving jurisdiction open to interpretation. Chile may have viewed his landing on an island hosting a Chilean base as sufficient grounds to assert authority.
Over time, the ambiguity of the wording of the ATS has been exacerbated by changing realities. Air travel is no longer what it was in the 1960s: in the United States alone, annual airline passengers numbered a little over fifty million in 1959, which later swelled to nearly 900 million in 2024. Even icy deserts like Antarctica are not spared from the growth in tourism; its tourist rate has gone up from less than 8,000 annual tourists three decades ago to almost 125,000 tourists in 2023. The original signatories of the ATS could not have foreseen how Antarctica would become a destination for luxury vacations over half a century later.
Photo Courtesy: Jiarui (Rachel) Lin
Perhaps Antarctica’s unique situation is that the icy continent has no inhabitants. Anywhere else, similar legal ambiguity would likely have escalated into more complicated conflicts with potentially significant consequences. But change is inevitable. With more of the world’s eyes turning to Antarctica as a potential travel destination or an untapped resource, the situation is more pressing than ever, and as a legal document, the ATS should evolve. In the coming years, its member countries may need to consider how this cold continent could potentially become a central issue, and how the international community acts will likely be a key test.
