MRED Around the World student Adam Loser sends a report from Seoul, South Korea, about the group’s visit to Songdo, home of a new global university that includes the University of Utah’s participation, as well as a few company visits.
Adam writes:
Today we started the day out on the Korean children’s holiday traveling to one of the world’s largest master-planned developments, Songdo. Located just outside the city of Incheon, Songdo is a $35 billion public/private city master-planned by Gale International, in partnership with POSCO E&C as a principal general contractor, and the Korean government.
For several years, the underlying seabed was the fill site from many of the nearby underground excavation projects, including Seoul’s subway system, one of the world’s largest and best-ranked. Now as a reclaimed city, Songdo boasts more than 1,500 acres of land with over 100 million square feet of buildings, comprised of 40 million commercial, 35 million residential, 10 million retail, 5 million hospitality, and 10 million of public space. Songdo is positioned to serve as a business hub for Northeast Asia. Located directly adjacent to the world’s highest-rated airport, Incheon International, Songdo’s location is optimal for reaching the Northeast Asia region and its rapidly growing markets. Over one-third of the world’s population lives within a three-hour flight of Incheon.
Within Songdo, we visited the education center, meeting with Dr. In Suk Han, president of the University of Utah Asia Campus. The campus is unique, called UniverCITY, comprising what is soon to be 10 of the world’s top universities in a central campus offering programs to domestic and international students alike. The U Asia campus will open this fall with under 100 students, but eventually will work up to over 1,000.
We then toured the greater education campus area, visited one of the riverwalk parks of Songdo, and ate lunch at one of the new malls, NC Cube, reminiscent to Salt Lake City’s Gateway.
After lunch, we traveled to Costco’s Korea offices, located in the Gwangmyeong shopping warehouse, and visited with Preston Draper, president of Costco Korea, and Ted Simons, director of real estate. Costco has been in the country since 1994 and has 10 stores in operation. The executive team presented a fantastic overview of their development process and challenges in South Korea. With the rebound of the economy, Costco Korea anticipates opening one or two stores per year for the next 10 years, translating into roughly $150 million in annual development.
Costco stores in Korea are wildly successful, and carry many domestic and international products. Most of their Kirkland Signature line is imported from the United States and is well-received by locals. Some months, the 10 Korean stores have higher sales volume than the 33 in Mexico and 25 in the UK combined. Mr. Draper was very gracious with his time in touring the facility and discussing product offerings, development challenges, and employee relations.
While the cheese balls, pizza, and polish dogs are the same, a few items you won’t likely see in the local Utah Costco stores include a $3,000 Prada bag, $10,000 Breitling watch, and a 5.23 carat diamond ring for $294,000. When asked why Costco would carry such items, Mr. Draper replied, “In Korea, shopping at our stores is all about aspiration.”
In the evening we rode the subway to Insadong and dined on traditional Korean barbecue, enjoying the jovial night scene in anticipation of the next day’s local holiday, Buddha’s Birthday.