Cityscapes Caught in Suwon's abandoned amusement park
Various rides are left abandoned at Woncheon Lake Land Amusement Park in this 2009 file photo. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun
By Ron Bandun
Today's purveyors of abandoned amusement parks don't know how easy they have it. You can just go to Jungnang-gu and pay 5,000 won to enter
. Ten years ago, Korea had one famous abandoned amusement park, Okpo Land, located all the way down on Geoje Island in South Gyeongsang Province, a long trip involving a bus through Tongyeong or a ferry from Busan. So when I discovered Woncheon Lake Land Amusement Park, my life became considerably easier.
Lake Land was found at a resort area surrounding Woncheon Lake in southeastern Suwon. The whole area was being demolished to make way for some new megaproject. There actually had been another amusement park right next door, Woncheon Greenland, but it was demolished first.
My first visit was in October 2008, when the area still had some life to it and families were still visiting for whatever reason, even though all the rides were closed. The park was not long abandoned and many rides still looked salvageable. It was a small park, but densely built on a multi-level complex, featuring a tacky “Disco” ride decorated in Americana, a flooded haunted house and a dragon-themed roller coaster, all stacked on top of each other. The nearby lake had several attractive floating restaurants, as well as paddleboats.
People wander freely past the closed Woncheon Lake Land Amusement Park in Suwon in this 2009 file photo. Courtesy of Ron Bandun
I shared some of my photos on a foreign-based website and got a pretty good response. Then the site owner revealed he'd been receiving messages from Suwon City Hall, asking for the pictures to be taken offline.
“The park mentioned in the article is scheduled to be developed as a self-supporting new town with general administrative complexes and high-tech industrial sites,” they said in a letter. “The park was closed in the winter of 2007 and enclosed with fencing in March of 2008 to prevent trespassers and possible accidents. There is even signage warning that trespassers will be prosecuted.”
However, none of my pictures show any kind of fence or sign; the only warnings I saw were for the roller coaster, warning riders they are “Not allowed to pregnant.”
Warnings for a roller coaster advise riders not to get pregnant in English, at Woncheon Lake Land Amusement Park in this 2009 file photo. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun
It was clear what motivated the city to come after us: handwringing image concerns that my pictures would make the world think Suwon was a hellscape of decaying amusement park rides.
“Since the article and pictures give no description about the area, they can generate misunderstanding and possibly damage the image of Suwon City,” the letter said.
The site included a note from the city with an unrealistic rendering of the future development, plus a link to gwanggyonewtown.or.kr, a Korean-only site no longer online.
A punching bag stares back inside an abandoned fun house at Woncheon Lake Land Amusement Park in this 2009 file photo. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun/2019-03-27(코리아타임스)
I returned to Woncheon several more times, especially after I found a direct bus route from my apartment and once even played a game of hide and seek among the rides.
Another time, I entered one of the floating restaurants, finding a still fully stocked lounge with karaoke and a bar. While there, I encountered a young guy in a suit, who claimed to be a lawyer representing the restaurant owners against the city. He was not happy to see me but I left without any trouble.
Sometime in 2010, someone reported the amusement park was demolished. I visited the Homeplus nearby, where from the roof I could see the amusement park still standing, even after they removed the trees and drained the lake, leaving the rides stranded in a vast muddy field I began calling “Mordor.” Eventually, that too was gone.
For the next several years, construction moved along as they built not just new high-rise apartments but also an entirely new landscape to suit the new development. People began moving in a couple years ago, and most probably don't know what the area was like before Gwanggyo New Town arrived.
The writer is a self-described “anarchaeologist.”