Daegu Casino

Daegu’s first casino opened without much fanfare back in March, and anyone who’s visited it will attest to the spectral silence that haunts it on most nights. Often the dealers outnumber the players, and the huge, glittering space is reminiscent of a Vegas apocalypse movie. The owners, however, are not perturbed.

“Casino’s are rarely profitable in the first 6-12 months,” said Ocean, Director of Marketing at Daegu Casino. “Our plan is to attract high-rollers from China and Japan using package deals, selling them cheap rooms, free flights to Daegu, and offers at various attractions.” A luxury golf course will open soon, and places like Woobang Land and Spa Valley provide added lure.

These plans remain embryonic at the moment, and the casino must make do with locals, particularly westerners, who, Ocean says: “gamble for fun, not for serious money. That is why we do not target those markets.” Whatever, they have made the place attractive to those of us who only know Blackjack and Texas Hold’em. Minimum bets are 10,000W (while that may seem high, the odds are not weighted heavily in the dealers favor in these games), and as long as you are playing free drinks and food will flow all night long. They also run poker tournaments two or three times a week with varying buy-ins.

The other major clients are Koreans who trick their way in using ‘passport residence’ in another country. Many will travel to places, particularly South America, where they can pick up a green card in about 30 days. They can then use this to claim residency, for work purposes, in that country, and with it be considered foreign enough for the casinos. Recently two men, with passport residence but living in Korea, cheated the Seoul casinos for 8 billion won, sparking calls to close this loophole.

A Foreign Ministry official explained the difficulty of this to the Chosun Ilbo: "It takes about two months to verify suspicious residence permits, but we’re required under present laws to issue a residency passport within eight days, so we have to hand out the passports without being able to verify the applicants."

So, Daegu Casino will be relying on westerners and the odd cheeky native for the time being, and it faces an uphill battle to gain recognition outside this fair city.

It is illegal even to advertise casinos in China, though it can be mentioned as a feature of the hotel. Most worryingly, Daegu casino is in direct competition with Seoul, Macau and a host of other well-known cities for the elusive high-rollers. However, Ocean says, it does have one ace up its sleeve: “Daegu is already a very popular hub for medical tourism, and we’re working with people to see if we can tie the two into each other. This has the added bonus of making it much easier for the Chinese to secure visas.” 

Published in InDaegu http://www.in-daegu.com/PDFs/June2011.pdf