In April 2020, manufacturing of the ITER vacuum vessel (VV) 1st sector has been completed by Korea domestic agency (KODA) since manufacturing started in February 2012. The ITER VV sector is the largest fusion VV structure in the world. Each step of the manufacturing was challenged as a first-of-a-kind (FOAK), and a French nuclear pressure vessel. The paper provides an overview of the major challenges which were overcome over the last 10 years.