Legoland to enter Korea by 2017

/ Courtesy of Gangwon Province

By Lee Ji-hye

British theme park company Merlin Entertainments is set to bring their Lego-themed amusement park to a city east of Seoul, according to a provincial press release.

Gangwon Province held a ceremony Friday to announce the construction of Legoland in its capital city, Chuncheon, promising the theme park will be completed within three years.

/ Yonhap

Various participants included the British ambassador Scott Wightman, the Danish ambassador Thomas Lehmann and Merlin's managing director of Legoland Parks John Jakobsen.

The province anticipates more than 2 million visitors to the amusement park each year, along with the creation of ten thousand new jobs, according to the release.

/ Yonhap

"We will turn this into the world's most beautiful global theme park by completing the construction by 2017 spring without any problems," Choi Moon-soon, governor of Gangwon Province said in his opening remarks.

Construction for additional facilities including a water park and hotels surrounding the theme park are to be completed by 2018.

Legoland Chuncheon is to be the seventh of its kind branched across the world, after Billund (Denmark), Windsor (U.K.), Carlsbad (U.S.), Gunzburg (Germany), Winter Haven (U.S.), and Johor Bahru (Malaysia).