Gary Player - The Legend

South Korea - One of Asia’s Hottest and Most Dynamic Golf Markets

Jan 28, 2010 | Filed Under: Golf Course Design   

As late as the 1970’s golf was considered “an elitist sport” and was actually discouraged by the government, but over the past 30 years it turned into a national obsession in South Korea.  It is now considered to be one of the hottest golf markets on the globe with a bevy of new course developments slated and the first ever Asian Champions Tour event to be held in the fall of this year.  Gary Player Design currently has four projects underway - Ansung City, Blue Valley Country Club, Jeju HaeDong Country Club and YoungNam Alps Country Club - and expects South Korea and Asia to continue to show strong growth potential over the next 10-15 years.

The fervor for golf really took hold in 1998 when Se Re Park stunned the LPGA Tour, and her home country, by winning 4 events and 2 Majors.  Her stellar play encouraged a throng of young women to take up the sport.  In 2009, 19 of the top 50 women golfers were South Korean and South Koreans won 11 of the 28 official LPGA events.  South Korea is the most dominate single country represented on the LPGA Tour.

Y.E. Yang’s victory at last year’s PGA Championship may have finally made the general golfing public aware that South Korea is producing world class male golfers, but what the public did not seem to notice is that there have been a number of South Korean champions already playing across the world.  KJ Choi has been a mainstay on the world golf stage for nearly 15 years racking up 17 wins including seven on the PGA Tour and rose to number five in the world in 2007. 

South Korea and Seoul is a must visit.  It is a vibrant city that has become one of the centers of tourism and economic activity in Asia.  One of the lesser known destinations is Suncheon Bay located in the South Western portion of the Korean Peninsula in the province of Jeollanam-do.  Suncheon Bay is composed of a wide estuarine tidal flat and intertidal marshes, creating one of the most diverse and beautiful coastal ecosystems in the country. Two rivers flow through the city and surrounding rice fields at the northern part of the bay, and numerous streams flow through the site. The tidal flats are largely muddy with shallow salt marshes supporting a wide-range of species, including at least 25 threatened birds.

The Bay has important scenic, tourist, and cultural heritage values, and the annual production of fish, seaweed, and mollusks, mainly harvested using traditional techniques, is substantial. To stunt rapid urban expansion The Suncheon Bay Natural Eco-park was established in 2004 and a management plan is underway which focuses on protection of biological resources, pollution abatement, institutional improvement, and public awareness. It is the first Korea’s coastal wetland to be registered on the list of The Ramsar Wetland in January 2006.

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