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E-Land vice chairwoman Park Sung-kyung (E-Land) |
E-Land vice chairwoman Park Sung-kyung has been more than just an entertainment figure in Korean showbiz.
While most of the superrich invite K-pop stars to perform at their events, the sister of E-Land chairman Park Sung-su organizes and arranges K-pop concerts and other shows under the theme of World & Asia Pop, or WAPOP.
Park presented the first WAPOP concert last October at Children’s Grand Park in Seoul. While scenes from popular TV dramas were shown on the backdrop, K-pop singers and traditional folk musicians performed to add the “extra Koreanness.”
“There are not many places where foreigners can indulge in K-pop,” Park told reporters. “WAPOP could become a landmark of hallyu, or the Korean Wave, and attract more than 5 million foreign tourists by 2015,” she said.
WAPOP is evidently becoming the main attraction in the culture and leisure business landscape.
E-Land Group, which has 54 fashion brands, 12 dining brands, four retail brands, five hotels and four amusement parks, built two performance halls dedicated to WAPOP. One is at Children’s Grand Park in Seoul, and the other opened last month in Kensington Jeju Hotel on the southern leisure island of Jejudo.
The retail giant, which started out as a small fashion boutique near Ewha Womans University in Seoul, is also planning to create a “K-pop town,” the World Theme Street, an international business center and a traditional-style village, among other projects, to make Jejudo Island a hallyu mecca.
Park is also planning to create an amusement park that she hopes will outdo Disneyworld in Orlando, Florida.
“From retail and fashion to dining and concerts, everything that E-Land has will be housed in the theme park. The time is ripe for the group to develop such content,” she said.
However, Park may see some turbulence in creating a “Magic Kingdom” of Korea like Walt Disney.
According to industry sources, ticket sales for the WAPOP concerts have been disappointing, and the organizers had to sell the tickets to Korean fans, though their initial plan was to make it a show exclusively for foreigners.
“Some of them were handed out for free, which shows that WAPOP is not getting attention from Koreans either,” an observer said.
“We are still in the early stages. What we are focusing on at this moment is creating content that can be enjoyed by everyone in the world through trial and error,” Park said.
By Bae Ji-sook (
baejisook@heraldcorp.com)
