GKL Denies Recruiting Customers Abroad After Report Questions Staff Trips to Hong Kong and Macau

Yonhap, citing an unnamed source, says Grand Korea Leisure's marketing staff and executives have been meeting customers in Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Mongolia without proper legal review, 11 years after Chinese police arrested Korean casino staff for recruiting gamblers. GKL says its staff serve existing customers and recruit no one.

• Grand Korea Leisure (GKL), the majority state-owned operator of the foreigner-only Seven Luck casinos, has denied that its staff recruit new customers abroad, after a Yonhap News Agency report on 6 October questioned their trips to Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Mongolia
• An unnamed source told Yonhap that GKL staff have met existing customers over meals and bought them gifts on those trips for three years, and that the company is not properly managing the legal risk of overseas marketing
• Yonhap reported that organising Chinese citizens to gamble abroad has been a crime under Article 303 of China's Criminal Law since March 2021, and that whether customer meetings amount to "organising" would depend on what was done
• GKL said it does not encourage casino visits or recruit new customers locally, and has made no marketing trips to China since 2015, when Chinese police arrested 14 employees of GKL and Paradise
• The report comes as GKL's third quarter stalled and a month after the culture ministry began examining claims that it overstated visitor numbers; GKL is due before a National Assembly audit on 14 October

A Source Says GKL Has Not Learned the Lesson of 2015

According to a Yonhap News Agency report published on 6 October, a source familiar with GKL said the company has for three years sent marketing staff and executives to Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Mongolia, where they met existing customers over meals and bought them gifts. The source claimed that, despite the 2015 arrests of its employees in China, GKL was failing to manage the legal risks of marketing overseas.

Travel records the source provided showed that a trip by GKL's chief executive to Singapore in June 2025 included a meeting with a specific customer and a restaurant meal costing more than ₩1 million, approximately $735, Yonhap reported. The head of GKL's marketing division and others travelled to Hong Kong and Macau this year. The source argued that meeting customers to encourage them to visit is different from benchmarking trips and needs prior review under local and Chinese law. Yonhap noted that Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore also regulate casino marketing and foreigners' local business activity. The source is not identified, and the report does not say that any law was broken.

What Chinese Law Prohibits

China's Criminal Law Amendment (XI), adopted on 26 December 2020 and in force since 1 March 2021, added a paragraph to Article 303: organising citizens of the People's Republic of China to gamble abroad or outside its borders, where the sums are large or the circumstances otherwise serious, is punished as running a casino. That carries up to five years' imprisonment and a fine, or five to 10 years in serious cases.

Yonhap reported that Li Ruiyi, a deputy chief judge in the Supreme People's Court's criminal division, said in February 2021 that the offence applies to foreigners as well as Chinese citizens. The agency also set out the limits: whether meeting existing customers counts as "organising" depends on the conduct and its scale, and China would need jurisdiction, for example because contact with mainland customers, bookings or payments took place on the mainland.

GKL's Denial

GKL told Yonhap that it does not carry out sales activities locally, such as directly encouraging casino visits or recruiting new customers. Its staff, it said, respond to existing customers' inquiries and requests, collect their feedback, help with visits to Korea and provide customer service. It added that it has made no marketing business trips to China since the 2015 incident. The statement does not dispute that the trips took place.

In June 2015 Chinese police arrested 14 employees of GKL and Paradise, along with travel agency staff, over customer recruitment, Yonhap reported, citing the South Korean embassy at the time. Media reports then said the Korean casinos kept offices in China, offered free flights and accommodation, and paid agents commissions linked to chip purchases or customer losses. Chinese authorities detained Crown Resorts staff in October 2016, and in June 2017 a Shanghai court jailed three Australian employees for nine to 10 months, ABC reported.

GKL, whose majority shareholder is the Korea Tourism Organization, reported third-quarter casino revenue of about ₩110.1 billion, approximately $80.9 million, up 1.1% year on year, on its monthly filings.

The Allegation Is About Risk Control, Not a Proven Breach

Nothing in the report shows that GKL organised anyone to gamble, and meals with existing customers in Singapore or Mongolia are a long way from the 2015 model of offices in China and commissions on losses. The source's point is narrower and harder to dismiss: a company whose staff were arrested once should be able to show that its overseas customer meetings are reviewed in advance. GKL's answer describes what its staff do, not how it checks that they stay on the right side of the line, and its assurance about China does not address Hong Kong and Macau, the Chinese special administrative regions named in the report. The 2021 amendment was written after the Korean and Crown arrests, and Chinese authorities decide what "organising" means.

Growth Pulls GKL Towards the Grey Zone

The commercial pressure runs the other way. GKL's Value-up Plan targets annual revenue of ₩503.8 billion, approximately $370 million, by 2030, and the company has been recruiting junkets, which it calls "VIP gaming partners", in markets where it says direct marketing "is difficult", GGRAsia reported in April, according to SiGMA. Arrivals from China rose 29.0% in the first eight months of 2026, according to ministry data, while GKL's quarter barely grew. Junkets move the work of finding players to intermediaries, but they do not settle who is organising whom, and they make it harder for the operator to see what is promised in its name.

A Public Company Will Be Asked in Public

GKL is the only public enterprise among Korea's foreigner-only casino operators, which makes it unusually exposed to this kind of reporting. This is the second Yonhap report in five weeks drawing on inside information: on 31 August the agency reported that the culture ministry was examining claims that GKL had overstated casino visitor numbers, which GKL said were not confirmed facts. The National Assembly's culture committee audits the Korea Tourism Organization and GKL on 14 October, Edaily reported, with the tourism fund casino levy and GKL's long-term leases already on the agenda.

GKL has denied the substance and nothing has been shown to break any law. What it has not yet shown is the compliance review the source says is missing, and lawmakers have the date to ask for it.