South Korea
Seoul’s skyscraping business ambitions
are dizzying, but one of its biggest
attractions is how down to earth the
residents are. We’ve rarely visited a safer
or more spacious capital city, or one more
welcoming to international delegates.
A late-night karaoke session, ideally
with some chimek (fried chicken and beer)
is an essential Seoul experience for
visitors. We spend our final evening in
the capital exploring the neon-soaked
streets of the Songpa district, before
belting out a terrible rendition of Natalie
Imbruglia’s ‘Torn’ after a few too many
rice wines. Perfect.
Left: Nurimaru
APEC House on
the coast of Busan
Below: The
160m flagpole
in ‘propaganda
village’, on the
open wound, splitting relatives not just
across an impassable border, but also
across 60 years of estrangement. “In
South Korea, we all pray for unification,”
she says. “But we know that it will not
come from war. If the US, or another
country, were to invade North Korea and
topple Chairman Kim’s regime, the
country would be left in a state of
economic disaster.
“The only way we can unify the two
nations is to slowly trickle in business,
and forge connections between North
and South.”
apartment blocks, constructed with
corporate sponsorship.
Our tour takes us to the 123rd floor of
Lotte World Tower, the sixth tallest
building in the world, and tallest in South
Korea.
From the observatory here, the
geometric rows of Seoul’s many business
districts are slotted into place like tiny
Tetris pieces. The tower offers meeting
rooms in the Signiel hotel between floors
76 and 101, as well as a large convention
space on the 31st floor.
Continuing the trend for scale, Coex
– South Korea’s busiest convention centre
– finished constructing its latest
attraction in 2017: a public library
containing a 13-metre tall bookshelf and
50,000 books. The Starfield Library is
located in the lower floors of a building
which offers 55 meeting rooms with
thumb-print recognition, as well as cafes,
restaurants, a casino and two connected
hotels.
As CMW visits, the very early stages
of construction are also beginning for the
new, 105-floor Hyundai Global Business
Center, which is located just outside Coex.
It is set to finish in 2023, containing a
70,000sqm convention centre with six
floors. These new facilities will add even
more spectacle to the already bustling,
world-famous Gangnam district.
Follow the leader
If the MICE and tourism industries can
offer a potential road towards economic
development for the North, then South
Korea can serve as a shining example of
where that road leads.
CMW’s tour of the country begins in
the capital – a vibrant, technologically
advanced and highly organised
metropolis. Seoul is a wealthy city, and its
greater metropolitan area is home to 9.75
million people, almost a fifth of South
Korea’s population. The city contains the
headquarters of international South
Korean businesses like Samsung and
Hyundai, and their company logos are
emblazoned on the sides of neatly
arranged and uniformly designed
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CONFERENCE & MEETINGS WORLD
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ISSUE 102
Beer festivals on Cooking Pot
Mountain
Leaving Seoul behind, our second stop is
the coastal city of Busan, on the country’s
south-eastern tip.
Translated literally, Busan means
“Cooking Pot Mountain”, a name derived
from the shape of the peak which sits
behind its main port - one of the busiest
in the world. The city, which snakes
around a number of mountains on South
Korea’s rocky coast, is a hub of both
industry and culture. It hosts the Busan
International Film Festival every year
inside the mind-bending constructivist
architecture of Busan Cinema Centre, and
is also home to South Korea’s famous
Haeundae Beach.
MICE is a thriving industry in Busan,
which contains a number of unique
venues and is the fastest growing
convention city in the world. The
stunning Nurimaru APEC House was
constructed in 2005 to host the APEC
Summit, an important political meeting
between countries in the Asia-Pacific
region. World leaders including George
W. Bush and Vladimir Putin gathered
around the ornate roundtable on the
venue’s top floor, which breaks out into a
series of lounges with 360-degree views
of the harbour.
The Busan Exhibition and Convention
Centre (BEXCO) is another important
venue for the city, having played host to
4.4m visitors in 2018 across a large
North Korean side
of the DMZ