Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism granted Mohegan Inspire a license to operate a foreigner-only casino in January. It was the first time since 2005 that the government granted such permission and it was also the first license of its kind issued to a foreign investor.
“We expect the opening of Inspire resort to go beyond the mere addition of a casino business site in the country. Instead, it is expected to represent a significant milestone in Korea’s culture and tourism industry,” Culture Minister Yu In-chon said in his congratulatory message.
However, while Korea has set an ambitious goal to attract 20 million inbound visitors and tourism revenue of $24.5 billion and has announced plans to foster the travel and tourism industry, it still lacks infrastructure that can link cultural high value-added tourism revenue.
According to experts, in order to develop Korean-style complex resorts and gain the upper hand in Asia’s complex resort competition, Korea needs strategies that combine gaming regulations and leverage the growing popularity of K-culture to expand entertainment facilities.
Korea does not have a strict casino regulation or related regulatory organizations and has not been able to properly cope with gambling addiction and illegal gambling that the public is concerned about.
As a result, it has led to public distrust of casino management and acted as an obstacle to drawing social support for introducing integrated resorts.
Experts suggest that institutional maintenance, such as casino supervision that can be trusted by the public, must come first to foster a Korean integrated 한국을 resort, and that innovation is needed to advance Korea’s supervisory system by benchmarking cases in neighboring countries, which control gambling addiction and illegal gaming issues effectively.
“In order to develop and foster integrated resorts as an industry, Korea needs to have a medium- to long-term development plan based on casino policies, with reference to those of other countries that run integrated resorts around us,” said Lee Hoon, a professor of tourism at Hanyang University.
Singapore has implemented responsible gambling strategies such as raising admission fees to restrict citizens’ indiscriminate access to casinos, banning the installation of ATMs in casinos and self-exclusion programs as part of its gambling addiction measures.
Meanwhile, Japan deeply addressed the process of legalizing casinos and introduced the Integrated Resort Maintenance Act that banned the installation of ATMs, restricted the number of each domestic visitor’s admission to three times per week and 10 times per four weeks, imposed an admission tax of 6,000 yen and prohibited the use of credit cards for purchasing casino chips.
Korea also needs a unified administrative body to regulate gaming, experts pointed out.
“For example, neighboring Singapore and the Philippines have supervisory bodies dedicated to casino management. Whether it is a committee or a department, a supervisory management body dedicated to supervising and fostering the casino industry is needed,” said Seo Won-seok, a professor at the College of Hotel and Tourism at Kyung Hee University, referring to the Macao Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ), Singapore Gambling Regulatory Authority (GRA) and Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (PAGCOR).
