Universal theme park -- South Korea

from today's Wall Street Journal:

Universal Parks Is Latest
To Build in South Korea
By EVAN RAMSTAD
November 28, 2007; Page B2

"SEOUL, South Korea -- Universal Parks & Resorts unveiled details of a $3.1 billion theme park and resort that is the biggest in a series of large-scale vacation projects under construction in South Korea.

The theme park, hotels and golf courses will cover more than 1,000 acres in the Seoul suburb of Hwaseong and be similar in scale to Universal Orlando Resort in Florida. The company also will build a convention center and an outlet shopping mall.

In the past few months, developers have announced plans to build three other large theme parks around the country. The burst of park construction is a sign of South Korea's rising affluence and increasing leisure time after the country a few years ago scaled back to a five-day workweek from six days.

One of the new parks, involving Viacom Inc.'s Paramount studios, will be built by 2009 in the neighboring city of Incheon. The city is home of South Korea's largest international airport.

Frank Stanek, a manager for the Universal project who was involved in the construction of Tokyo Disneyland in the 1980s, said the Hwaseong complex represents the largest investment Universal has made in a theme park. "Physically, it will match the size of our facility in Florida and will have a lot of room to expand," Mr. Stanek said." ...

"The park aims to draw 10 million visitors a year by late in the next decade.

There are two large amusement parks in South Korea, both near Seoul, and several smaller ones in other cities. Those parks generate about $1.2 billion in annual ticket sales, and the largest of them, Samsung Group's Everland park, gets about eight million visitors a year.

Last month, a real-estate developer announced plans to build a theme park connected to movies from MGM, the U.S. studio owned by private-equity investors. And the provincial government of Jeju Island, off the southern coast of South Korea, is developing a large Asia-themed park with investors from Hong Kong and the U.S."


for the complete story see:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119615155653405117.html?mod=g
ooglenews_wsj&apl=y&r=714294