South Korean casino Kangwon Land has been ordered to pay KRW 580m (US $520K) to a gambler who wouldn’t stop trying his luck.
The gambler, identified only as Kim, reportedly lost a total of KRW 20.8b ($18.6M) at Kangwon Land over a four-year period. Between April 2003 and April 2007, Kim paid a total of 181 visits to Kangwon Land, the only one of South Korea’s 17 casinos that allows local residents to gamble.
The Korea Times reported that Kim had asked Kangwon Land to ban him from the premises as early as May 2004, by which time he’d already lost KRW 10.8b. South Korean law allows gamblers to request a lift of their self-exclusion request following a three-month cooling-off period but Kangwon Land reportedly granted Kim’s request for a lifting of his ban after just one month.
Looking for a way to redeem his losses, Kim sued Kangwon Land, claiming the casino had violated the rules on entry bans. But the Seoul High Court ruled that Kangwon Land was only 20% responsible for Kim’s post-exclusion losses because the gambler knew that “entering the casino would result in losing money.”
SOUTH KOREA CRUISE CASINO PROTEST
Meanwhile, South Korea’s proposal to let locals gamble on shipboard casinos flying the national flag has met with more protests. South Koreans can already gamble on shipboard casinos flying international flags but the country’s Oceans and Fisheries Ministry wants to open this option up to domestic cruise liners.
Last week, Sung Hee-jik, a former miner and poet, announced he would strap a 70 kg. mine timber to his back and lug the beam from the city of Taebaek all the way to Kangwon Land’s door to protest the idea of locals in shipboard casinos. About 100 supporters of the appropriately named Struggling Committee against Admission to Cruise Casinos will join the 58-year-old Sung on his trek, which he estimates will take around 10 days.
Korea Bizwire quoted Sung saying his protest would “show Koreans how hard and desperate it was for miners to do their jobs several kilometers under the surface,” which doesn’t really have anything to do with casinos, be they land-based or maritime. But Sung insists the image of him sweating under his load will “raise awareness about the cruise casino admission controversy.”
While the protest appears to be anti-gambling, Sung is really protesting the challenge to Kangwon Land’s monopoly on local gambling. Kangwon Land is located in a remote mountainous area dotted with abandoned mines and its opening was intended to boost the local economy by encouraging tourism, something the ex-miners fear will suffer if locals are allowed to gamble on the high seas.
