South Koreans are only allowed to gamble at the remote Kangwon Land casino, but the pandemic might change that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
South Korea.- With fewer tourist arrivals, casinos in South Korea are struggling under the impact of the pandemic since locals are banned from legally gambling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the exception of the remote Kangwon Land<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, casinos in South Korea cater only to non-residents. Jeju Island casinos<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, for instance were heavily dependent on Chinese gamblers, and are now considering staff cuts because of the lack of traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But analysts at the latest AGBrief webinar said they expected that this foreigner-only policy could change now the pandemic has reduced tourist arrivals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nicholas Kim, investment director at the Incheon Free Economic Zone, said there could a possibility to open gaming to South Koreans, although the government would have to create a regulation for the industry first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said: \u201cEvery industry in our country is growing up very rapidly. It\u2019s a natural course of development, but I don\u2019t see it in the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeff Heo, director of strategic planning at Gaming Korea, supported the idea and said that if the local gambling ban is lifted, other restrictions could be enforced such as an entry fee, or limited monthly entrance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kim said the two IRs being constructed in Incheon will be finished more or less on schedule. The US$700 million project from Caesars Entertainment is due to open next year and the US$2.5 billion resort from Mohegan Sun is due to be finished in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kim said South Korea could issue more IR licences if there was market interest and requests from potential operators. The minimum investment required until now has been US$600 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" South Koreans are only allowed to gamble at the remote Kangwon Land casino, but the pandemic might change that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8434,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"South Korean casinos, primarily catering to non-residents, are experiencing significant operational challenges due to reduced tourist arrivals amidst the pandemic. Industry analysts are now positing a potential policy shift to allow domestic gambling, contingent on the establishment of robust regulatory frameworks, which could include entry fees or monthly access limits. This potential market liberalization holds substantial implications for integrated resorts under development by entities such as Caesars Entertainment and Mohegan Sun in Incheon, and could catalyze further IR license issuance.","focusai_entities":"Kangwon Land, AGBrief, Nicholas Kim, Incheon Free Economic Zone, Jeff Heo, Gaming Korea, Caesars Entertainment, Mohegan Sun","focusai_location":"South Korea, Jeju Island, Incheon","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (0.95), compliance_legal (0.85), operator_casino (0.9), investor_analyst (0.9), journalist_researcher (0.8)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Regulatory Framework Details","query":"What specific regulatory compliance and governance frameworks are being considered to mitigate social costs if South Korea opens its domestic market to integrated resort gambling?"},{"label":"IR Investment Outlook","query":"How would the potential liberalization of local gambling access impact the projected GGR and ROI for the Caesars Entertainment and Mohegan Sun integrated resorts currently under development in Incheon?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16338,156],"tags":[12436,229,152],"class_list":["post-8432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-asia-news","category-regulation-news","tag-casinos","tag-gambling","tag-south-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8432"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8447,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8432\/revisions\/8447"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}