Universal Unveils Details
Of Korean Theme Park

SEOUL, South Korea -- Universal Parks & Resorts unveiled details of a $3.1 billion theme park and resort, becoming the biggest in a mini-boom of large-scale vacation projects now under construction in South Korea.

The theme park, hotels and golf courses will cover 1,160 acres (4.7 million square meters) in the Seoul suburb of Hwaseong and be similar in scale to Universal Orlando Resort in Florida. The company will also 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 growing affluence and increasing leisure time after the country a few years ago scaled back to a five-day work week from the previous six.

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

"Timing is everything and this is Korea's time," said Frank Stanek, a manager for the Universal project who was involved in the construction of Tokyo Disneyland in the 1980s. He 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.

In addition to Orlando, Universal Parks & Resorts operates a park in Hollywood, Calif., and one in Osaka, Japan. It is also developing parks in Singapore and Dubai. The company is a division of NBC Universal, which is a subsidiary of General Electric Co.

The park in South Korea will lead to the creation of more than 58,000 jobs, said government officials who signed a development agreement with Universal Parks & Resorts. It aims to draw 10 million visitors a year by late in the next decade.

Financing is being provided by several Korean banks, including Korea Development Bank, Shinhan Bank and Korea Investment Securities. The government will build highways and a train connection to the resort.

So far, 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 annually.

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

-- Jeongjin Lim contributed to this article

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