COVID-19 Takes Its Toll on Gambling in South Korea

Article by : Helen Jul 22, 2020

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Updated: Apr 6, 2023

The casino industry of South Korea is minuscule compared to that of the U.S. and other countries with developed gambling markets, but – as COVID-19 continues to show us – the size doesn’t mean squat when it comes to the negative effect of the pandemics. The tiny yet not-so-long-ago cozy South Korean market of games of chance & skill is literally flattened with no single brick-and-mortar casino available to locals, and the realities of gambling in South Korea don’t make it any better.

The only casino where citizens of South Korea could play without a foreign passport – Kangwon Land – is still closed, whereas the deadlines have already been postponed several times, and it’s only logical to assume that the can will be kicked further down the road unless the number of COVID-19 cases suddenly starts to plummet.

What’s Next for South Korean Casino Fans?

Lovers of gambling in South Korea have long been under pressure, and not only for the absence of choice in land-based gambling. Unfortunately, Koreans can’t play from the comfort of their homes since national laws prohibit online gambling altogether. Moreover, unlike many other countries that do not pursue law violators, South Korea does punish its citizens for illegal gambling, regardless of who it is that violates the law. There are even anti-gambling cyber squads assigned to deal with illicit gambling.

Since online gambling has no solution to the issue, the only way to go for locals is to wait until Kangwon Land adequately responds to the plateau in the graph of COVID-19 cases. On the one hand, it was very logical to close casinos in February-March, when the pandemics soared to its peak of 1,062 daily cases (March 1). On the other hand, it might not make as much sense to keep casinos shuttered (especially Kangwon Land, which brings more revenue than all other venues combined) now that the number is floating somewhere around 50.

On that note, there are two more aspects that might aggravate the situation and hamper the bright future of gambling in South Korea: internal problems of Kangwon Land and a drying streak of tourists. The latter is of course pretty natural (six thousand tourists in May against more than a million in the respective month of 2019 looks horrible, though) and will likely be mitigated in, hopefully, 2021 or – God bless us all – maybe even the second half of 2020, whereas the former one, with the capped revenue as the core issue, is more severe in the long run and, worst of all, unanswered as of now.

Foreigner-Only Casinos: the Same Degree of Suffering

The situation isn’t better with foreigner-only casinos. Paradise Co Ltd, one of the two biggest foreign casino operators in South Korea, is extracting only about 20% of what it was getting for the summer months of the previous year, whereas the sum generated in June is half less than that of May. Along with that, Paradise narrows its financing channel, offering its senior employees either to accept long-term unpaid leaves of absence or retire.

South Korea gambling is on life support and there’s no visible panacea to cure it. Yet local gamblers – that is, those unwilling to get a foreign passport – have no other choice but to remain optimistic and pray for Kangwon Land to deal with its in-State issues.

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