President Chung Il-young poses with Chairman Cabin Brown of the Board of Inspire Integrated Entertainment Resort and others after they struck a cooperation agreement to develop and a build first-of-its-kind integrated resort at Incheon International Airport on Dec. 6. (Photo: Incheon Int’l Airport)

Incheon Airport Corp. has signed a cooperation agreement with Inspire Integrated Entertainment Resort and Paramount Pictures to develop and build a first-of-its-kind integrated resort at Incheon International Airport. President Chung Il-young signed the agreement with Chairman Cabin Brown of the Board of Inspire Integrated Entertainment Resort.

Inspire is a special purpose company in which Mohegan Gaming & Entertainment (MGE) has a 100 percent stake.
The multi-phase development project, dubbed “Project Inspire,” calls for building a multi-purpose resort at a 4.37 million square meter site adjacent to the 2nd Terminal of Incheon International Airport.

The project will include a Paramount Studio’s theme park, five-star hotels and casinos. It will cost a combined 6 trillion won. The projected integrated resort project will be launched early next year, and it is scheduled to be opened in 2022. Integrated resort refers to a resort that houses accommodation facilities, casinos, shopping centers, and MICE facilities.

It is the first time in the world an integrated resort connected to an international airport will be opened.
The resort will be outfitted with shopping and concert halls, Macao’s strong points, and theme parks, Singapore’s strength, Inspire Chairman Brown was quoted as saying.

Incheon International Airport Corp. President Chung said if it is converged with Incheon International Airport, a hub of Northeast Asia, Yeongjongdo can become one of Northeast Asia’s largest resorts.

Emerging from the signing ceremony, Chairman Brown stressed the significance of the potential of the airport’s location. He said he selected Yeongjongdo as the site of a project when he dropped by at Incheon International Airport on his way to China to enter East Asia in 2016.

Northeast Asia is an untapped tourism area, said the chairman, adding that he was sure that Yeongjongdo has a geological advantage surpassing that of Macao and Sinagapore. Incheon International Airport, a one-hour flight from Beijing and Shanghai, is an attractive location to earn tourist revenues via foreigners-only casinos.

A plan is under study to add to the 2nd terminal a private air terminal to attract VIP tourists using the casinos.
Hallyu enjoys popularity beyond imagination, and a large throng of tourists from the Asian region will likely stream into the resort in Yeongjongdo to watch differentiation performances & events and experience the theme park, he predicted.

Incheon International Airport now handles approximately 62 million passengers. The figure is forecast to surpass a 100 million milestone by 2023. The problem is that not many transit passengers come out of the airport.

For instance, about 30 percent of transit passengers at Dubai International Airport come back from a trip to downtown, but most at Incheon International Airport stay there prior to departure. President Chung’s meetings with Chairman Brown are designed to tackle such problems.

Unlike Las Vegas, which focuses on casinos, President Chung said, MGE’s flagship property, Mohegan Sun in Connecticut looks like a family-oriented resort. If Inspire’s integrated resort and Paramount’s theme park are operated in a full-fledged manner, Chung said, they will create more than 10,000 jobs and attract more than 3 million tourism newcomers and more than 600,000 transit passengers to visit Korea via Incheon International Airport.

Grand Opening of 4th Terminal of Kuwait International Airport

Under the stewardship of Incheon International Airport, the fourth terminal of Kuwait International Airport was successfully opened to traffic.

An opening ceremony for the 4th terminal took place at Kuwait City on Dec. 11. The fourth terminal was built to cope with a rise in passenger demand for Kuwait International Airport, which handled 12 million passengers last year. The airport is wholly owned by the Kuwait government.

In April, Incheon International Airport was given the right to operate the fourth terminal for five years. The former is responsible for the operation, maintenance and upkeep of the terminal.