History of Gambling in South Korea

Gambling in South Korea: illegal for most, legal in pockets

South Korea has one of the most unusual gambling landscapes in Asia. On one hand, the country runs a full set of legal betting products: a casino, horse racing, cycle racing, motorboat racing, lotteries, sports betting through Sports Toto, and even bullfighting. On the other hand, almost all of it is reserved for small, government-supervised stakes, and the casino floor is off limits to Korean citizens everywhere except one mountain resort in Gangwon Province⁵.

The split goes back to how the industry was built. Casinos were licensed from the late 1960s onward with one purpose in mind: attracting foreign tourists and their money, not serving the domestic population. Lotteries and pari-mutuel racing, by contrast, were created as public projects, with proceeds flowing to government funds, and were opened to Koreans on that basis⁵.

The result is a system where gambling is a crime for Korean citizens under the Criminal Act, with narrow exceptions at approved venues, and where that rule even follows Koreans overseas: a South Korean national who gambles at a casino in Macau or Las Vegas is still treated as breaking Korean law⁷. Online gambling is prohibited outright, and the ban is strictly enforced, even though several forms of land-based gambling are legal⁶.

Despite the restrictions, illegal gambling is quite common. The officially recognized illegal forms include internet gambling, hwatu (Korean flower cards), poker and adult game rooms, and the illegal online market covers private sports betting, ladder games and Powerball-style draws⁹. The gap between what Koreans may legally do and what they actually do has shaped the whole modern history of gambling in the country¹¹.

Games of chance in traditional Korean culture

Long before there was a casino or a lottery in Korea, there were games of chance played with hwatu, the Korean flower cards that remain one of the most familiar forms of gambling in the country⁸. Card games of this kind, like other games of chance across the region, evolved into their familiar forms over time, with the games that survived being those people kept choosing to play⁹.

Hwatu itself sits in an odd position today. It is a beloved folk pastime, and it appears on the official lists of illegal gambling when played for money outside permitted settings, which tells you how deeply woven into everyday life it is: the state does not treat it as exotic, just as something that needs a boundary⁹.

That boundary matters because the traditional games never disappeared. When online gambling arrived in Korea, hwatu and poker were among the first things to move onto web boards and private sites, and adult arcades running card-style games became a recurring enforcement target¹⁰. The modern illegal market, in other words, grew out of games Koreans had been playing at kitchen tables for a century.

Betting on contests is old here too. Bullfighting, in particular, survives as a legally recognized gambling event, one of the seven categories the National Gambling Control Commission treats as an authorized industry, a remarkable exception for a country otherwise so restrictive⁵.

Lotteries and racing: the public projects that opened betting to Koreans

While casinos were being built for foreigners, the state built its own gambling products for Koreans, and these became the backbone of legal betting in the country.

Horse racing is the oldest of them. The Korea Racing Authority runs the sport today, with tracks including LetsRun Park Seoul, and it is one of the few legal ways a Korean citizen can place a bet in person. The legal product has limits, though, and those limits pushed bettors toward the illegal market: illegal horse racing sites offered unlimited betting, higher payout rates and online purchase, none of which the legal pari-mutuel pools could match¹³. Online betting on horse races from outside the racetrack was abolished in 2009, closing what had been a legal remote channel¹³.

Cycle racing (keirin-style track cycling) and motorboat racing were added as separate legal products, each run by public foundations, each with its own network of venues and betting windows⁵. Like horse racing, they exist to raise public funds, and like horse racing they are open to Korean citizens.

Put together, the legal menu for a Korean citizen is: one casino, three racing products, lotteries, Sports Toto and bullfighting. Everything else, from poker rooms to online casinos, sits on the illegal side of the line⁹.

Casinos for foreigners only

The casino era began in August 1967, when the Paradise Group opened the Golden Gate Casino in Incheon, the first casino in Korea¹. The following year, 1968, Paradise opened Walkerhill in Seoul, which still operates today and bills itself as Korea's leading foreigner-only casino¹⁴.

From the start, the model was tourism. Casinos were licensed to bring in foreign visitors, and Koreans were kept out. That design has never changed. Today there are 17 casinos in the country, and 16 of them are legally reserved exclusively for foreign passport holders and expatriates². Entry requires a passport, the minimum age is 19, and the venues are regulated by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism⁷.

The foreigner-only sector has had its ups and downs. For years it depended heavily on Japanese and Chinese visitors, and it suffered badly when Chinese group tourism dried up. The return of Chinese group tourists has put the industry back in momentum, with the mass-market segments benefiting most from rising inbound visitor numbers¹⁸. New supply has been rare: the first new foreigner-only casino license in 19 years was granted in January 2024, the first such license since Grand Korea Leisure received one in January 2006²¹. The government has long signaled that any new licenses would only be for foreigner-only casinos, keeping the locals-banned rule intact²³.

For a foreign visitor today, the foreigner-only casinos are the main gambling option: Walkerhill in Seoul, Paradise Grand on Jeju, Paradise City near Incheon airport, and venues in Busan and elsewhere, all open to anyone with a foreign passport¹⁴.

Kangwon Land: the one casino for Koreans

The great exception opened in a former mining town. Kangwon Land was established in June 1998 as part of a nationwide project, jointly led by the government and Gangwon Province, to revive the economy of a region hit hard by mine closures³. A small casino opened first in 2000, and the main casino followed in 2002²⁵. A full-scale expansion was completed on March 28, 2003²⁶.

What made it historic was the entry rule. Under special legislation, Kangwon Land became the first and only casino in Korea where Korean citizens and foreign visitors can play side by side¹. It is also the largest casino in the country and operates year-round without closing days²⁷.

Kangwon Land's status as the only casino where Koreans may play has made it a cultural landmark in its own right, and the resort has become one of the best-known gambling destinations in the country¹⁵. Its fame is a measure of how much demand there is among Korean gamblers, demand that the country's other casinos, open only to foreign visitors, cannot meet.

If you want the full picture of visiting, see our pages on Kangwon Land and the Kangwon Land Casino at High1 Resort.

Sports betting and the rise of online gambling

Sports betting in its legal form means Sports Toto, the sports promotion voting ticket that covers a short list of sports. Most other forms of sports betting are illegal, and the illegal market has always offered far more: every sport, online games, and betting by internet and mobile, against Sports Toto's handful of products²⁹.

That gap is the engine of the illegal market. Illegal operators can take unlimited bets on anything; the legal product cannot. The same pattern appeared in horse racing, and it reappears with every new technology¹³.

Online gambling itself is prohibited in South Korea, and players caught gambling online can face penalties and charges⁶. Despite this, the rate of online gambling in the country has increased, surpassing the government's ability to curb the pastime¹¹. Illegal sports gambling in particular covers all sports and online games, accessible via the internet and mobile, far beyond the limited menu of the legal operators³².

The newest chapter is still being written. Prediction markets, where people bet on the outcome of real-world events, have boomed in Korea in a legal gray zone, since wagering money online on the outcome of an event is considered illegal gambling under Korean law³³. And the esports industry has been pushing lawmakers to green-light a Toto betting proposal on esports, part of a wider Sports Toto expansion that would fold competitive gaming into the legal betting menu²⁹. Both show the same historical pattern: a new form of betting appears, the law catches up slowly, and the question is whether it gets absorbed into the state-run products or pushed underground.

Who may take part

The history leaves a clear split that still governs a visit today.

• Foreign visitors and expatriates can enter any of the 16 foreigner-only casinos with a passport, aged 19 or over, and can also play at Kangwon Land².
• Korean citizens may gamble only in limited circumstances: small wagers at approved venues such as the Seoul horse racing track and Kangwon Land, plus the racing products, lotteries, Sports Toto and bullfighting¹⁹.
• Korean citizens abroad are still covered by Korean law, which treats gambling by nationals as a crime even in a foreign country⁷.
• Everyone is barred from online gambling, which is prohibited and enforced⁶.

For more detail, see gambling in South Korea and gambling as a visitor.

Timeline

What the history means for a visit today

If you are a visitor, the history works in your favor. The whole casino industry was built for you: 16 foreigner-only casinos across Seoul, Incheon, Busan and Jeju, plus Kangwon Land, all open with a passport². The longest-running names, Walkerhill and the Paradise properties, have been refining the foreigner-only formula since the 1960s¹⁴.

If you live in Korea as a foreign resident, the same rules generally apply at the casino door, but the online ban covers you too: online gambling is prohibited in the country regardless of nationality, so the legal options are the land-based ones⁶.

If you are Korean, the history explains the narrow menu. The legal products are the public ones, the racing tracks, the lottery counters, Sports Toto and Kangwon Land, and everything else carries real risk, from the strictly enforced online ban to the crime that follows nationals even abroad⁶. The practical takeaway is simple: the state's gambling offerings exist, they are genuinely popular, and the boundaries around them are older and firmer than most people expect.