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Korea's largest immersive media hall Le Space opens in Incheon

Published: 13 May. 2024, 17:10 Updated: 13 May. 2024, 18:43

YIM SEUNG-HYE
[email protected]

Floral Desert, one of the 18 zones at Le Space, an immersive media art exhibition inside the new Inspire Entertainment Resort on Yeongjong Island [LE SPACE]

YEONGJONG ISLAND, Incheon — Another entertainment facility inside the grand Inspire Entertainment Resort on Yeongjong Island had its grand opening on May 1. Le Space, the resort's new venue, boasts what has become Korea's largest immersive media art exhibition hall.

"Beyond the Cosmos” is the exhibit that is welcoming visitors to the new space, featuring 18 different halls in an area covering 6,142 square meters (1.5 acres). The journey to this "space,” which costs 28,000 won ($20) for adults and 20,000 won for children aged under 13, begins inside a dark hall — the Cosmo Station — where a video plays, telling guests that a wormhole was discovered on Yeongjong Island. After passing through the wormhole that warps space and time, the participants arrive in a parallel universe. The participants can now feel free to experience the 18 different zones.

A journey to outer space at Le Space at the Inspire Entertainment Resort on Yeongjong Island begins at the Cosmo Station where participants are told that they will be traveling through a wormhole found on the island. [YIM SEUNG-HYE]

The company behind this immersive experience is Hyundai Futurenet, the producer of the digital exhibitions at Arte Museum in Jeju, which has become one of the busiest tourist hot spots on the island — mainly due to its young visitors who take pictures in its photogenic spaces.

Le Space is doing the same, with short videos and photographs beginning to appear on various social media channels featuring young people teleporting to different zones inside Le Space.

Popular zones include Big Bang, where it feels like thousands of stars are falling down on your head, and the Parallel Universe, where the ocean splits in two as you stand in the middle.

A Parallel Universe, one of the 18 zones at Le Space, an immersive media art exhibition [YIM SEUNG-HYE]

Such an immersive experience is possible, as the venue was built without pillars and features high ceilings so that videos and images can be projected on all surfaces, including the walls, the ceiling and the floor — the first space in the country to adopt this technology.

"It was important for us to make the whole space able to project images and videos to maximize the immersive experience,” said Oh Tae-yoon, the chief of the exhibition project from Hyundai Futurenet.

In the Volcanic Zone, fog and the smell of lava heighten the immersive effect. This was possible because the exhibition adopted numerous interactive technologies, like motion recognition, touch and sound detection.

The project took two years to make, and Le Space plans to showcase new exhibitions every two to three years.

As the media art exhibition is aimed at attracting global visitors, the videos played at the beginning and the end are in English with Korean subtitles.

"Some Koreans with kids may want the videos to play in Korean, but the storyline is so simple that children and non-English speakers will also have no problem understanding what they're about,” said Oh.

The exhibition also has a reservation system to prevent overcrowding while maintaining the quality of visitors' exhibition experience. Le Space opens every day from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.

American casino and gaming company Mohegan Gaming & Entertainment (MGE), the owner of Korea's Inspire Resort, announced early this month that it expects to attract a total of about 3.5 million visitors by the end of the year. Since the resort's soft opening in December, the resort has attracted about 1 million visitors.

Space Exploration invites participants to sit down comfortably and watch a film that wraps up the space tour [LE SPACE]

In May, it plans to open a new kids’ playground, called Bounce, and an outdoor park that offers various experience zones, called Discovery Park, on a vast 99,173 square meters of land. The resort also worked with Glow Seoul, a local space branding company, to create Oasis Gourmet Village. The large-scale international food court that seats 1,000 people finally began welcoming guests from April.

Hyundai Futurenet is also behind “Aurora,” a 150-meter-long (492 feet) immersive digital entertainment street inside the resort. It began operating since last month as well.

Every 30 minutes from 8 a.m. to midnight, this street makes guests stop and raise their heads as well as a hand holding a mobile phone. Currently, an immersive show titled "Under the Blue Land” is being played in 22K resolution, creating a jaw-dropping experience. The video goes on for about three minutes.

A section at Le Space has a large sphere that revolves and also projects high-resolution images, a complex technology, according to the organizers. [YIM SEUNG-HYE]

This is an addition to the other facilities that have been operating, including three five-star hotel towers with 1,275 rooms combined, an arena with 15,000 seats, MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) facilities with the largest hotel banquet hall in Korea, an indoor water park that operates year-round, a foreigner-only casino and Inspire Mall, which combines shopping, dining and entertainment spaces.

Inspire Entertainment Resort is the first resort that Mohegan Gaming & Entertainment has established outside North America. Inspire is the company's eighth establishment.

BY YIM SEUNG-HYE [[email protected]]