Say Hello To This $275 Billion South Korean Tourist Trap

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

In order to boost tourism, South Korea is poised to spend an insane-sounding $275 billion on a mega-city called 8City. The installment will include a laundry list of amenities, including casinos, luxury condominiums, fancy-ass hotels, a variety of shopping malls, a theme park with a water park, and a 50,000-seat concert hall. There will also be a “healing town,” a “hallyu town,” which will serve as a platform for Korean entertainment, and a Formula One racetrack. It’ll be like super-Vegas.

8City will be built on the islands of Yongyu-Muui, located near the city of Incheon, home to an international airport for convenient access. The endeavor, should it actually happen, will create an estimated 930,000 jobs, and is expected to draw 134 million tourists, mainly from China.

The biggest tourist trap in the history of humankind will also include attractions like the Inner Circle—a giant tubular “smart” building, whatever that means—and the Megastrip, which is essentially a massive strip mall, and the largest architectural object in the world. All in all, the entire city will cover 80 square kilometers. And if you look at the concept art, some of you may notice that part of 8City also looks like a giant penis shining in the sunlight.

At the moment this is all in the planning stages, and the developers are trying to procure the funding from a variety of domestic and international sources. The first stage of 8City will be completed by 2020 — again, if all the funding falls into place — while 2030 is the ultimate end date they have in mind. I can’t imagine that this will happen anywhere near that fast. They need a lot of money, and almost a million workers to build this mammoth tribute to excess.

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