By I expected this Airport to have some passengers but just like Yangyang and Uljin, there were no passengers to be seen. This was the nicest and biggest of the three Airports I visited but once again was void of passengers.
Muan International Airport is an airport in Muan County, Jeollanam-do. Construction of the airport began in 1997 and the airport opened on November 9, 2007. The airport serves the cities of Gwangju and Mokpo. It replaced the nearby Mokpo Airport and is expected to replace the nearby Gwangju Airport in the near future as well. [Wikipedia]
Weeds growing on the walkway.
This is a real nice Airport to be empty.
A convenience store was open and even had a couple of customers that came in just to use the store.
Glass elevators inside the Airport.
There were two planes set to arrive on this day.
The parking lot is screaming for cars.
You can see more photos of the Muan International Airport here.
The cost of Yanyang, Uljin and Muan International Airports were approaching a combined 1.5 billion dollars. I didn’t see a single plane take off or land at any of these airports nor did I see a single customer at any of these Airports. Muan does have flights but nothing near what an Airport of this size should have. Muan has to be the second best Airport in Korea behind Inchon but is just another of Korea’s “Ghost Airports“.
12:22 pm on April 25th, 2010 1
Neat post, thanks.
Even when the airport opened there were concerns about its viability. Gwangju and Muan are still fighting over who'll handle flights, and even though the Muan New City is estimated to have some 150,000 people when it's finished in 2019, the biggest population centers in Jeollanam-do are still without a big airport.
Clearly you don't need 14 (or something) airports in a country smaller than Pennsylvania, but politicians seem to enjoy building them.
12:29 pm on April 25th, 2010 2
This looks like a mini-Inchon International.
2:55 pm on April 25th, 2010 3
In my news trawl today: Muan will be expanded to accompany jumbo jets.
That might make more sense, especially if the goal is to get people to/from that region from other countries [LINK].
GI Korea, is there any way to alter the layout of your site so that links show up in a different color, like red or blue, or end up underlined? Just wondering.
12:03 am on April 26th, 2010 4
Hey ~ what a coincidence! KDJ gets elected in 1997 and construction for a ghost airport in his home province's backyard is started that same year.
6:09 am on April 26th, 2010 5
Are you sure that's the Muan arrivals board? As far as I can tell, Muan doesn't have any scheduled service to Jeju, just Seoul-Gimpo and Beijing.
6:24 am on April 26th, 2010 6
That picture was taken yesterday at Muan Airport.
6:29 am on April 26th, 2010 7
Not sure what your point is there. Kim Daejung wasn't inaugurated until the end of February 1998.
Are you saying he forced his rival to start funding and constructing an airport in the year before he took office? Or are you saying that Kim Youngsam's administration took to building an airport there for his party to get support against Kim Daejung?
6:32 am on April 26th, 2010 8
Maybe you were at the wrong Muan Airport, NC47. They could be like 현대수퍼 where there are like ten of them in any given neighborhood.
7:50 am on April 26th, 2010 9
I was at the Airport in the google image.
5:32 am on April 29th, 2010 10
[...] I can’t help wondering if this will end up like Korea’s ghost airports, which ROK Drop has chronicled here, here and here. [...]