Holyjoe wrote:Work has begun on the stupidly-big and really rather unnecessary Asian Games stadium in Incheon:

So Munhak AND this white-elephant are going to sit there unused for the next 25 years? What a joke.

Korea really is going to go broke if they continue this reckless path of low-taxes AND the most wasteful spending imaginable.

For some reason I seem to recall reading about a World Cup stadium that could be demolished to make way for an apartment complex or two and the Munhak is ringing a few bells... maybe not though as they'd have to build a baseball stadium elsewhere in the city first having knocked down the Sungeui one (well they don't have to, they can always relocate the Wyverns). Had a quick Google to see if I was making this up and came across this article regarding a fiscal crisis at Incheon city government level from April 2012:

The city of Incheon has paid its civil servants one day late, blaming â€œa temporary lack of liquidity.â€ The delay in pay due to a deficit of 2 billion won (1.8 million U.S. dollars) is something not to be ignored given the city`s annual budget of 8 trillion won (7.1 billion dollars). The debt ratio of the Incheon City Hall by year`s end is expected to reach 40 percent. If the figure exceeds 40 percent, this will plunge the city into a debt crisis and prompt an audit by the central government. This is tantamount to a debt workout program for corporations.

Incheon became debt-saddled due to a host of reckless populist projects carried out under former mayor Ahn Sang-soo. Eunha Rail, which cost 85.3 billion won (75.5 million dollars), will be torn down due to poor construction. A free economic zone into which the city injected more than 1 trillion won (885 million dollars) has attracted few investors. The construction of the main stadium for the 2014 Asian Games, a venture needing more than 500 billion won (443 million dollars), has also come under scrutiny. If Incheon`s Munhak Stadium, which hosted games of the 2002 World Cup soccer finals, had been renovated, the city would have needed just 54 billion won (48 million dollars). This is in stark contrast to Daegu, which successfully hosted the IAAF World Championships in 2011 by refurbishing Daegu Stadium.