Seoul Public Parks Becoming Open-air Gambling Dens – Report

Seoul public parks, originally designed as children’s play areas, have been taken over by betting-addicted elderly gamblers, a media exposé claims.

Parks originally built for residents in the Daerim neighborhood of Yeongdeungpo District, in the South Korean capital, have “become gambling dens,” the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported.

The newspaper said its reporters visited two children’s parks in Daerim. The reporters said they routinely “found anywhere from 10 to 50 people gathered daily, playing poker and mahjong” for money.

Mahjong is a tile-based game often played for small amounts of money. Gambling on both mahjong and poker is illegal in South Korea outside permit-holding casinos.

The newspaper wrote that groups of elderly people “hide gambling tables and chairs” in bushes around the park.

One elderly gambler told the newspaper: “Our rule is that the first person to arrive in the morning takes out the tables and chairs and sets up the boards.”

The parks’ administrators reportedly displayed notices around the venues. The notices threaten punitive action against people “illegally stacking chairs” in the public space.

The newspaper claimed many of the gamblers are ethnic Chinese or naturalised former Chinese citizens.

The media outlet said elderly people typically “gamble in groups of four” at the park. Some of the losers swore at each other in Chinese, Chosun wrote.

Seoul Public Parks: Betting on the Rise?

Casinobeats has also seen evidence of money changing hands during games of the board game Go in parks in the center of Seoul.

Residents say they have filed complaints with district officials. They say they feel it is no longer safe to access the parks.

Daerim-dong resident Han Yeong-gyu, aged 76, told the newspaper: “The park where children should be playing has become a gambling den for adults. There are a lot of elderly people who have been drinking there. So I don’t go near the park for fear of getting into trouble.”

An elementary school student, aged nine, told the same outlet their grandmother told them “not to go near the park.”

And a worker at a daycare center near one of the parks said: “We hear loud noises coming from the park even in broad daylight. So we have our children do physical activities indoors instead of at the park.”

District Issues Warning

Yeongdeungpo District officials say they have posted notices around the two parks, warning of gambling prohibitions.

“If the chairs and tables are not removed by next month, our staff will remove them,” a district official stated.

Yeongdeungpo District concluded that it may also request a police investigation if illegal gambling-related problems persist in Daerim.

Gambling is not just a problem among the South Korean capital’s elderly population. Earlier this year, a major survey of children in Seoul found that more than 2% of Seoul’s elementary school children have experienced gambling online.

Last year, another South Korean media outlet reported that groups of elderly gamblers were holding illicit gambling sessions in dangerous areas.

These reportedly include the Daebo Apartment complex in Daegu. The complex was the site of a lethal fire over six years ago. The dens are “concentrated in old buildings” that display “high fire risks,” the outlet explained.