Kangwon Land's New Chief Puts Its ₩3 Trillion K-HIT Resort Plan Under Review

A month after taking office, Kangwon Land's first permanent chief executive since 2023 has set up a committee to diagnose the company and test the feasibility of its flagship resort plan. The review lands while the only casino open to Koreans is waiting on Seoul for the exemptions the plan depends on.

• Kangwon Land launched an Organisational Diagnosis and Innovation Committee on 2 October, with three tasks to complete by the end of the year: reforming its organisation and personnel systems, diagnosing and reviewing the feasibility of major policy projects including the K-HIT resort plan, and changing its culture and working practices
• K-HIT, the master plan Kangwon Land published in November 2025, envisages investing about ₩3 trillion, approximately $2.2 billion, by 2035 in a media dome arena, three new hotels, a new main casino and wellness and leisure zones, with targets of 13 million visitors and ₩3.5 trillion of revenue a year
• Chief executive Kim Do-gyun, a retired army general who commanded the Capital Defense Command from 2020 to 2022, took office on 2 September, ending a vacancy of more than two and a half years in which the company was run by acting chiefs
• The first phase is already under way, including a ₩200 billion renovation of 757 hotel and condominium rooms and a second casino floor due in 2028, and second-quarter operating profit fell 26.2% to ₩43.2 billion as the works began
• The review comes as South Korea's foreigner-only operators post record takings and the industry prepares for an integrated resort in Osaka in 2030

A New Chief Orders a Review of What Was Decided Without One

Kangwon Land, which runs the High1 resort in Jeongseon in the former coal-mining region of Gangwon Province, held the kick-off meeting of the committee at its Grand Hotel on 2 October, according to the company's announcement. The committee was set up, the company said, because a comprehensive inspection and diagnosis was needed of management issues "accumulated during the long period of management vacancy". Its co-chairs are Kim Chang-jin, a research fellow at the University of Seoul, and Kim Dae-jung, head of the company's organisational diagnosis task force. Lee Jung-hwan, dean of Myongji University's Graduate School of Education, is the external member, and the internal members include the head of talent management, the trade union's planning chief and representatives of women and young employees.

The committee will work until the end of the year on three tasks, the second of which is "K-HIT 프로젝트 등 주요 정책과제 진단 및 타당성 검토" (diagnosis and feasibility review of major policy projects, including the K-HIT project). "We will take a cool look at the organisation as it stands and identify specifically where change and innovation are needed," Kim said, in our translation of the Korean. The company did not say what a feasibility review could lead to, and it gave no budget or timetable beyond the year end.

Kim became the company's 11th chief executive on 2 September, after shareholders approved his appointment at an extraordinary meeting on 26 August. According to Kangwon Land's filing on the Financial Supervisory Service's DART system, he commanded the army's Capital Defense Command from 2020 to 2022, and earlier served as director-general for North Korea policy at the Ministry of National Defense and as defence reform secretary in the presidential National Security Office. As the head of a public enterprise he is appointed by the President for three years. His predecessor as permanent chief, Lee Sam-geol, left in December 2023 with about four months of his term remaining, and the company was then run by acting chief executives Choi Chul-gyu and, from 4 March 2026, Nam Han-gyu, Newsis and Money Today reported.

What K-HIT Is and What Is Already Being Spent

K-HIT, short for Korea High1 Integrated Tourism, was presented in November 2025 as a plan to turn the casino into a global integrated resort. According to ZDNet Korea's account of the master plan, about 71% of the roughly ₩3 trillion budget would go into a "Grand Core Zone" with a media dome arena, three new hotel buildings and a new Grand Casino, alongside a wellness zone and a year-round leisure park, in three phases running to 2035. The company then asked for government support including exemption from the state's preliminary feasibility study for large public projects, designation as a national strategic industry and easier casino regulation.

The first phase is committed. In March Kangwon Land began a ₩200 billion (approximately $147 million) renovation of the Grand Hotel's main tower, with 477 rooms, and five Mountain Condo buildings with 280 rooms, which it described as the largest in its history, according to Newspim; it ties in with a second casino floor expected to open in the first half of 2028. Second-quarter revenue fell 4.2% year on year to ₩345.6 billion (approximately $254 million) and operating profit fell 26.2% to ₩43.2 billion (approximately $32 million), which Korean press reports attributed partly to the investment programme.

Demand at the resort is steady rather than strong. Kangwon Land said on 2 October that about 94,000 people visited over the four-day Chuseok holiday from 24 to 27 September, including about 33,000 at the casino, and cited Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism figures showing 2,478,658 casino visitors in 2025, up 4.4%. At its board meeting on 30 September it set a record date for an extraordinary general meeting; the agenda has not been announced.

A Feasibility Review Is Not a Retreat, but It Reopens the Plan

Kim used his inaugural address to promise to carry out K-HIT, so the committee is not a signal that the plan will be dropped. It does, however, put the largest investment in the company's history in front of a review panel chaired by an outside researcher and a new appointee's task force, less than a year after acting management launched it. The master plan was drawn up while the post was vacant, which gives a new presidential appointee room to rescope it without disowning a predecessor. The phases most exposed are the later ones: the ₩200 billion renovation and the second casino are contracted, whereas the Grand Core Zone, which carries most of the money, is planned for 2026 to 2032 and depends on the exemption from the preliminary feasibility study that the company was still seeking in April.

The Real Constraint Sits in Seoul, Not Jeongseon

Kangwon Land is the only one of South Korea's 18 casinos that Koreans may enter, a monopoly that exists under the Special Act on Assistance to the Development of Abandoned Mine Areas, which was extended in 2021 to 2045. That makes it a public-policy instrument as much as a business, and K-HIT's economics depend on decisions only the government can take: the preliminary feasibility exemption and the easing of casino operating limits. At a policy briefing in December 2025 President Lee Jae-myung asked the company to weigh social effects such as gambling addiction alongside business viability, according to Korean press reports, and Kangwon Land has since added an AI-based addiction prevention system to its priorities. Any internal review that shrinks or reorders K-HIT will be read in Seoul as well as in the mining towns that depend on it.

Osaka Sets the Clock

The foreigner-only operators are having a strong year, with Paradise reporting a record third quarter as foreign arrivals reach a 30-year high, and the government is offering them construction loans from the tourism fund while it pursues a higher levy. Kangwon Land's customers are Korean, and MGM Osaka, scheduled to open in the autumn of 2030, will be a short flight away for many of them. A review that ends in the new year leaves little room in a timetable that already runs the main construction phase to 2032. The committee's value will depend on whether it narrows K-HIT to what can be built before that competition arrives.

Kangwon Land has a permanent chief again, and its first act has been to ask whether its biggest plan still stands up. The answer matters less to the casino than to the government that must decide whether to let it build.