Korean roboticists announced over the weekend that their industry had achieved yet another world first, as a droid officiated at a wedding south of Seoul.

"Tiro" the robot priest/master-of-ceremonies joins an illustrious list of Korean machine pioneers, including the SGR-A1 sacrificial DMZ-guarding gun-bot and the new droid chaperones being deployed to curb adolescent lust in Korean schools.

Now, South Koreans can be guarded from godless northern hordes, kept pure until marriage by robots and then actually joined in matrimony at the hands of a machine.

According to AFP and Hanool Robotics, Tiro and an unspecified number of assistant machines were due to handle the wedding of Hanool engineer Seok Gyeong-jae and his lovely bride in Daejeon - a city 120km south of Seoul.