According to the plan, the ministry will construct more sports facilities of 106 square kilometers total and improve their services while easing the accessibility to the places. (image: Paul in Uijeonbu/flickr)
SEOUL, May 20 (Korea Bizwire) – By 2022, most Koreans are expected to enjoy various sports activities in places no farther than 10 minutes by walk and 30 minutes by car.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced a “Mid and Long-term Plan to Expand Facilities for Sports for All” based on the balanced arrangement of the public sports facilities on May 19.
According to the plan, the ministry will construct more sports facilities of 106 square kilometers total and improve their services while easing the accessibility to the places. For this, it will invest 1.27 trillion won to build 1,124 sports facilities by 2022.
Currently, the ministry arranged a sports facility in a city, a county and a district. However, the ministry will change the arrangement based on the sphere of living like village (10 minutes by walk), township (10 minutes by car) and city or county (30 minutes by car) for the easy access to the facilities.
To raise the service quality of crowded sports facilities like swimming pools and badminton courts in densely populated places, the ministry will supply new facilities based on the results of GIS analysis. In case of Uijeongbu City which has five swimming pools, for example, it will offer two additional swimming pools in areas where people feel hard to find places to swim due to overcrowding and long distance.
To implement the plan effectively in time, the ministry will attract participation by private sector operators. The ministry will take care of huge facilities and facilities to commercialize like sports complexes and ice rinks and let private sectors supply facilities with high commercial viability and those easy to manage like billiard halls and martial art studios.
It will also launch a website “New Sports Map” to offer information on sports facilities across the country by 2016. Through the map, anyone can check the current information of the whole sports facilities nationwide and book to use them.
An official at the ministry said, “If our plan is implemented as scheduled, seven out of ten Koreans can join the daily sports activities by 2022. With the plan, all the citizens can do whatever they want to anytime anywhere and the plan will raise Korea as a ‘sports powerhouse’ based on grass-root sports activities.”
Written by John Choi (johnchoi@koreabizwire.com)
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