G3-247 Report SOUTH KOREA
SOUTH KOREA: Vital Statistics Capital: Seoul Population:49,039,986 Land Area: 99,720
sq.km Currency: South Korean won (KRW) Median age: 40.2 years Languages: Korean, English Ethnic Groups: Homogenous (except for 20,000 Chinese) Government: Republic Chief of State: President PARK Geun-hye Head of Government: Prime Minister CHUNG Hong-won Cabinet: State council appointed by the president on the prime minister’s recommendation Elections: President elected by popular vote for a single five year term. Park elected in 2012 and next election is 2017. Prime Minister appointed by President with consent of National Assembly.
Caesars has been aggressively looking for opportunities to
expand into Asia have failing to secure permission to build a
casino in Macau where rival US companies are flourishing.
Sega Sammy has been watching the growth of integrat- ed resorts particularly keeping an eye on the Japanese market. With this in mind the company announced its intention to participate in this business area and the plan has been approved although construction is yet to start.
Sega Sammy began amusement centre operations back in 1965 and later developed pachislot and pachinko machines and amusement arcade machines.
In a bid to enter the casino market the company began to look at partners and this began with the acquisition of all the shares of Phoenix Resort in February 2012.
Phoenix manages one of Japan’s resort facilities, Phoenix Seagaia Resort.
Meanwhile in May 2012 Sega Sammy set up a joint ven- ture with Paradise Group to plan and develop a resort in Incheon. The company owns a 45 per cent stake in the new Paradise SegaSammy company.
The new joint venture company took over the existing Paradise Casino Incheon in July 2013 which was already operated by Paradise and via this acquisition the com- pany plans to gain expertise and experience in casino management.
It also gives them an existing casino licence around which they can use to develop and expand the area into a large scale casino resort. It will include a hotel, shop- ping mall, convention centre and offices. The hotel will have 700 rooms and the gaming area of 11,000sq.m in the casino. At the moment the gaming area has a floor area of 1,300sq.m which will be enlarged.
At Sega Sammy Creation the division has also begun to develop new casino machines with an expected release this year.
Heyjeong Shim, IR Manager at Paradise Casino said: “Our case is totally different from the Caesars/Lippo case as we already have a casino licence in the Incheon area so we don’t need a new licence or approval from the government. Under the current Korean Gaming Act, there is no specific hurdle to relocate or expand within the same province.
“When we complete the new resort we will shut down our existing Incheon casino and start operations at the new site.
“Today the Korean gaming industry is receiving a lot of attention from many investors and situations such as Las Vegas Player entering, casino openings in Japan will be a signal for changes just as Macau’s early stage of expansion was down to Singapore’s successful casino results.
“But we are also concerned about new competition and we need to be ready for the future by exploring the casi- no market.”
In another South Korean project the company is plan- ning to participate in the development of Centum City
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