Kangwon Land's KL Saberi Slot Business Has Lost ₩14.8bn Since 2020 and Sold 77 Machines Abroad

Data obtained by an opposition lawmaker show Kangwon Land's slot machine manufacturing business has run at a loss every year since 2020, while a Philippine sales office that cost about ₩700 million found no new distributors. The losses total about $11.1 million, not the $236 million some English-language reports have carried.

• Kangwon Land's slot machine manufacturing business, which sells under the KL Saberi brand, lost money in each of the six years from 2020 to 2025, a cumulative deficit of ₩14.806 billion, approximately $11.1 million, according to data the company submitted to Rep. Koo Ja-keun of the People Power Party
• It has sold 77 machines abroad in that time, 68 of them in the Philippines, where sales went from 20 in 2023 and 42 in 2024 to none in 2025 and six so far this year
• A Philippine office opened in 2022 has cost about ₩700 million and signed no new distributors, which Kangwon Land says is because the country is the exclusive territory of its distributor RGB
• When it entered the business in 2017, Kangwon Land set a target of 10,000 machines a year from 2031, with ₩500 billion of revenue and ₩200 billion of net profit
• The figures arrive days after the company's new chief executive put its ₩3 trillion K-HIT resort plan under review, and ahead of the National Assembly's annual audit of state agencies

Six Years of Losses, and a Philippine Office That Sold Nothing Last Year

Kangwon Land's slot machine manufacturing business lost ₩1.399 billion in 2020 and has not made a profit in any year since, for a cumulative deficit of ₩14.806 billion over 2020 to 2025, according to data the company submitted to Rep. Koo Ja-keun, the People Power Party's floor secretary on the National Assembly's Trade, Industry, Energy, SMEs and Startups Committee. Seoul Economic Daily first reported the figures on 1 October, and Newspim followed in its 2026 parliamentary audit coverage. Neither report gives the business's revenue or says whether the deficit includes development costs or depreciation.

By Newspim's account, the annual loss rose from about ₩1.4 billion in 2020 to about ₩3.4 billion in 2025, approximately $2.5 million, up about 17% on the year before. Some English-language reports have converted the six-year total as $236 million; at about ₩1,339 to the dollar, ₩14.8 billion is about $11.1 million.

The business has sold 77 machines worldwide over the period, 68 of them, or 88.31%, in the Philippines: 20 in 2023, 42 in 2024, none in 2025 and six in 2026 to date. Newspim reported that a further 12 machines were contracted this year under conditional sale and test bank arrangements, which have produced no revenue yet.

The Philippine office, opened in 2022, cost about ₩700 million, approximately $520,000, in rent for the office, staff housing and vehicles and other costs up to the end of August, and found no new distributors and signed no new contracts, according to Koo's office. Kangwon Land said the Philippines is the exclusive territory of RGB, its Southeast Asian distributor, so it had concentrated on managing that relationship and on joint sales.

Koo's office also questioned the staffing. The employee posted there in January 2024 spent 243 days in South Korea up to 6 September 2026, about a quarter of the posting, according to its analysis of immigration records, for reasons including family care, medical treatment and work, while a fixed monthly overseas allowance worth about ₩40 million, approximately $30,000, a year was paid regardless. Kangwon Land's own comparison found the office cost ₩203 million in 2025, ₩62 million more than sending one employee on a monthly business trip. "Sales are weak and there is not even a system for evaluating the office's own performance," Koo said, in our translation, calling for a review of whether the office is needed at all.

A Familiar Criticism, a Year Apart

In October 2025, Hankyoreh reported data obtained by another People Power Party member, Rep. Kang Seung-kyu, showing Kangwon Land had put about ₩12.36 billion, approximately $9.2 million, into slot machine exports since 2020, against about ₩1.33 billion of exports. It had then shipped 71 machines, 62 to the Philippines and nine to Uruguay, with 12 for Cambodia and 31 for Uruguay awaiting delivery. Koo's figures add only six sales since, and neither report explains what became of those 43 machines.

The company's own account is brighter. Newsis reported from G2E Asia in Macau in May that the company had exported 20 machines to the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) in 2025, a year in which Koo's data record no Philippine general sales; the reports do not reconcile the two. In June, Sports Seoul reported that Kangwon Land had placed 482 KL Saberi machines at home and abroad, about 372 of them on its own Jeongseon floor, which runs 1,362 slot machines, and others with foreigner-only operator Grand Korea Leisure, whose third quarter has stalled.

A Manufacturer Whose Main Customer Is Itself Proves Little

About 372 of the 482 machines KL Saberi has placed sit on Kangwon Land's own floor, which makes the business largely an in-house supplier to the only casino Koreans may enter. Its stated purpose, according to Sports Seoul, was import substitution, cutting the foreign currency spent on imported machines, and the deficit is in effect the price of that policy. Whether it is a fair price cannot be judged without revenue or the price Kangwon Land pays itself. The export business that was meant to spread the fixed costs has not arrived, and Sports Seoul's own figure, that the top 10 manufacturers hold more than 90% of the global market, helps explain why.

The Philippine Office Was Never Set Up to Find Anyone

The ₩700 million spent in Manila is small against the deficit, but it is the clearest test of how the business is run. An office whose market belongs exclusively to one distributor cannot, by Kangwon Land's own explanation, sign new ones, so the absence of new contracts is a design feature rather than a failure. What it can be judged on is sales through RGB, and those fell to zero in 2025. Once the company's own comparison showed business trips would be cheaper, the case for the office rested on a benefit nobody was measuring.

The 2031 Target Belongs to a Different Business

Ten thousand machines a year from 2031 against 77 export sales in six years is not a gap a better office closes. As a public enterprise, Kangwon Land answers to the National Assembly, and Kim Do-gyun, chief executive since 2 September, already has a committee reviewing major policy projects until the end of the year. The question for that review is whether KL Saberi is a growth business, an import substitution programme or a manufacturing commitment to the former mining region, because each would justify a different level of loss.

KL Saberi has proved it can build machines that Kangwon Land's own floor will take. Six years of losses suggest the rest of the market has not been persuaded, and the review now under way is the place to decide how long to keep trying.