SM Entertainment, in a consortium along with two real estate development companies, Fides and M Studio City, have been selected as developers of a new visual-cultural-recreational complex (yeah man, seriously, that’s what they named that thing), titled “Jo Kam Do“, literally meaning, “Bird’s Eye View”.
Now here comes the wall of text about basic info of the place: City of Munkyung in Northern Kyungsang province, where the complex will be built, selected the three companies for development of its ambitious project. The complex will cost Munkyung 43 billion Won ($40 million U.S.) and the total area of 888,168㎡ will be divided up into three sectors; Sae Jae, Ga Eun, Ha Nae, with construction of Sae Jae beginning this year. The first sector, planned to be complete within the first half of 2012, will include indoor and outdoor filming studios, recreational facilities such as spa and water park, visual section with stages for performances and facilities for autograph sessions, and so on.
Now is the more relevant part for those of you that are wondering where SM comes into all of this.
Since this park is being built in the countryside far away from Seoul, Korea’s capital that is famously holding close to half of the national population in its area, it needs to differentiate itself from other theme parks and recreational complexes in order for people from Seoul to travel down there and keep the area alive by feeding it cash. That, is where our friends in the idol business come in; as they provide the complex with the contents of their company. Different zones named after their celebrities, including, but not limited to, SNSD, TVXQ, Super Junior, SHINee, f(x), and BoA, will be offering fan meetings and autograph sessions.
There is also a plan to have the stars stay at the hotel in the complex and then name the room that they stayed in after them, so that their fans would want to stay in the same room their idol did.
Might sound a bit weird or creepy, but hey, there are people out there that are willing to spend extra just so they can sleep in the same bed that Changmin or Yuri did. In short, SM’s involvement is to spice the complex up with some flavour of its idols.
SM is not the only entertainment industry representative in the game though; movie director Kang Jae Kyu is to take part in this project as a shareholder and shoot his movies in the studios in this complex. Mr. Kang was the director of Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War, the 4th highest-grossing film in Korean history, so I guess we can say he is pretty famous… making him a strong ally.
The city of Munkyung doesn’t really have many tourist attractions, and the complex is planned around the concept that it will create itself; that is, unlike the traditional method of putting hotels/restaurants/bars where a tourist attraction already exists (like a beach or a hot spring), they’re building the tourist attraction themselves along with all those other things – like a Disney Land.
In this case, the major attraction isn’t Mickey and Snow White; it is what SM has to offer. It is really up to them to get people down there and spend money. Will Jo Kam Do become a major attraction and a centre of hallyu wave, or will we end up studying about it in business class as a case of complete failure? Whatever the result may be, I look forward to writing about this baby in future.
Can’t wait for them to finish building it. Can you?
Stay tuned to allkpop for a few years as they build that thing from scratch.
