Starfield Hanam attracts 10 million visitors

By Park Jae-hyuk

Starfield Hanam has attracted more than 10 million visitors in 140 days since its opening last September, the mega-sized shopping mall’s operator Shinsegae Group said Tuesday.

As of Jan. 26, a total of 10 million people have visited the shopping mall southeast of Seoul in Gyeonggi Province. The facility built on the 119,000-square-meter site has attracted 11.5 million visitors as of Feb. 12.

The number of daily visitors on average was about 71,000, which is larger than that of Tokyo Disneyland in Japan, which attracts 16 million annually on average. The Seoul-based retail conglomerate said the number of visitors has been counted by hundreds of sensors checking the movements of customers at the gates and within the facility.

“The success was achieved because of our efforts to make a life-sharing space, beyond a space merely for shopping,” Shinsegae Property President Im Yeong-rok said. “We will try our best for more customers to spend great days at Starfield Hanam.”

Accommodating a warehouse store, luxury brands, restaurants and leisure facilities, the mall has been in the limelight since its opening. Shinsegae Vice Chairman Chung Yong-jin had vowed to make “a shopping theme park” offering various activities at one stop, during the mall’s opening ceremony.

Starfield Hanam marked a profit in the fourth quarter last year ― just in four months after its opening. At that time, retail industry officials said such a record has not been common in the Korean market.

Industry sources say the shopping mall will open a showroom for Tesla Motors within a week at the earliest, although Shinsegae has yet to announce a specific schedule. Tesla said it would open the showroom by the end of last November, but failed to make it due to an approval delay by the Korean government.