Walk along the Han River at six in the morning and you will see them before you understand them. Dozens of people in bucket hats and sun sleeves. Each carries exactly one club. They queue on a strip of mown grass that was empty scrubland five years ago. Nobody is warming up for anything. This is the whole sport, and Korea park golf has become the fastest-growing thing on the country’s riverbanks.
Foreign residents pass these courses daily on bike paths from Yeouido to Ttukseom. Most never learn what they are looking at. Meanwhile, the number of these courses has more than doubled in six years. Provincial governors now campaign on promises to build a thousand more. In addition, the national government has started writing safety rules for a game that had none.
The story is no longer about retirees finding a hobby. Instead, it has become a story about public land and municipal budgets. Above all, it is about what happens when a fast-aging country discovers a sport it can actually afford.
Here is the short version. Korea had 254 park golf courses in 2020. By January 2026 it had 564. Registered players went from 45,000 to nearly 230,000 over the same stretch. However, the real number playing is estimated above 600,000. As a result, a niche pastime for people in their seventies now shapes local election campaigns. It also shapes river-use law and an equipment industry worth hundreds of billions of won.
Park golf is golf with almost everything removed. Players use a single club — no bag, no set, no choices. The ball is plastic, roughly 60mm across and under 100 grams. Furthermore, the cup is considerably wider than a golf hole. According to the official specifications, a nine-hole course fits inside 500 metres. Moreover, the longest individual hole is meant to stay under 100 metres. Consequently, a full 18-hole round takes about ninety minutes of unhurried walking.
The game was invented in 1983 in Makubetsu, a small town in Hokkaido. Its organisers wanted something families could play together on ordinary park lawns. Japan took to it enthusiastically. Today it counts more than five million players and 700-plus official courses. Korea imported the sport in 1995, where it sat quietly for two decades. Then the pandemic arrived, outdoor activity became the only acceptable activity, and the curve went vertical.
Internationally, the game has spread to more than 18 countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia and Taiwan. Nevertheless, nowhere has adopted it with Korea’s speed or Korea’s political intensity. Japan built its park golf culture over forty years. Korea built most of its infrastructure in six.
One detail matters for understanding the conflicts that follow. Although the international standard caps holes at 100 metres, some Korean municipalities have built holes stretching to 300 metres. Longer courses simply look more impressive in a press release. That gap between the rulebook and the concrete is where much of this story lives.
The National Assembly Research Service put the growth at 117.3% between 2020 and 2025, from 254 courses to 552. By January 2026 the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism counted 564. Roughly 140 of those arrived during 2025 alone. For comparison, Korea had just 226 outdoor courses in 2019.
Membership data tells the same story from the demand side. The Korea Park Golf Association registered about 45,000 members in 2020. That figure reached 106,505 in 2022 and 184,000 in 2024. By the end of 2025 it stood at 229,757, a fivefold rise in five years. However, registration is optional, and most casual players never bother. Industry and government estimates therefore put actual participation above 600,000. A million is widely treated as the next milestone.
![IMAGE SLOT 2 — INFOGRAPHIC 1: Course count 2019–2026]
The geography is the genuinely unusual part. Korean leisure trends normally radiate outward from Seoul. This one did not. Gyeongnam province alone held 73 courses in early 2025, about 15.1% of the national total. Gyeongbuk followed with 57. At the other end, Daejeon and Incheon had five each. In short, park golf is a rural and provincial phenomenon. Almost everything else in Korea concentrates in the capital region.
Usage figures scale accordingly. National audit data recorded park golf visits rising from 8.94 million in 2022 to 12.77 million in 2023. That is a 42% jump in a single year. Furthermore, players aged 50 to 70 account for roughly 70% of that traffic. Korea park golf is therefore one of the few growth industries built entirely on older consumers.
![IMAGE SLOT 3 — INFOGRAPHIC 2: Registered members 2020–2025]
Money explains most of it. A weekend round at a Korean golf course comfortably costs ₩200,000 or more. Green fees, caddie fees and cart fees push the total to roughly $145 before anyone buys lunch. A round of park golf at a Seoul municipal course costs ₩3,000, about two dollars. Many provincial courses charge nothing at all, and most sit between ₩1,000 and ₩6,000.
That arithmetic landed at an interesting moment. Korea’s traditional golf industry had already peaked and begun deflating. Rounds played fell from 50.56 million in 2021 to 47.72 million in 2023, then to 46.41 million in 2024. That is three consecutive years of decline. Meanwhile, screen golf absorbed the younger, urban end of that demand. Park golf absorbed the older end.
There is also a physical logic. The game requires walking, not power. A round covers two or three kilometres at conversational pace. Therefore it suits knees that have already done sixty years of work. Consequently the sport has become a fixture of Korea’s silver economy. That market is the country’s fastest-expanding, and foreign investors still mostly overlook it.
Finally, park golf solved a scheduling problem. Korea keeps raising the effective retirement age. Even so, a generation leaves full-time work in its early sixties with twenty-five active years ahead. Those years need structure. Park golf provides three mornings a week, a club roster and a scorecard. Above all, it provides a reason to leave the apartment for the price of a coffee. Similar logic drives the country’s running boom among younger Koreans. It also drives the enormous, quietly unprofitable fishing industry among middle-aged men.
Once 600,000 people wanted something, politicians noticed. In the 2024 local elections, 130 of Korea’s 243 local government heads campaigned with park golf pledges. That is 53.5%. Among Seoul’s district mayors the figure hit 73.1%. Older voters turn out reliably. Besides, a park golf course is a visible, ribbon-cuttable promise that costs less than a swimming pool.
The 2026 local elections escalated things considerably. One gubernatorial candidate in the Gwangju-Jeonnam region promised 1,000 courses, placing one within thirty minutes of every resident. A North Jeolla candidate proposed a 180-hole complex able to host national tournaments. In Boryeong, a mayoral candidate pitched 54 holes bundled with a five-star hotel. Meanwhile one Changwon campaign simply promised “500 holes.”
The budgets attached to these promises are not small. North Jeolla committed roughly ₩30 billion, about $22 million, to its 180-hole plan. Geoje in Gyeongnam earmarked a similar ₩30 billion through 2035 plus a separate ₩11.8 billion project. Geochang County allocated ₩3.6 billion for 72 holes across eight sites. Additionally, Gunwi County in Daegu and North Jeolla spent much of 2026 in a public contest. Each claimed it would own the country’s largest park golf course.
![IMAGE SLOT 4 — Hangang Park, Seoul: the public riverside land at stake]
Whether demand justifies this remains genuinely unclear. Gyeongnam, already the national leader with 73 courses, has another 59 planned. That is an 80% increase on a base some researchers already consider oversupplied. Song Jin-ho of the National Budget Research Institute warned that “excessive expansion strategies” risk financial burdens and operational inefficiency. Accordingly, he urged municipalities to recheck demand forecasts before breaking ground.
Park golf needs flat, cheap, unbuilt land near where people live. In Korea that means riverbanks, and roughly 63.6% of all courses sit on or beside rivers and streams. Riverbanks, however, are public land. Occupancy permits, flood management rules and environmental regulation all apply. Municipalities rushing to cut ribbons paid little attention to any of them.
The scale of non-compliance is remarkable. A parliamentary report by Rep. Lee Joo-hwan examined the 88 park golf courses built on national waterways. Of those, 56 — or 64% — were operating illegally. Forty had no river-use permit at all, while 16 had expanded beyond what their permits allowed. Permit data shows why. Only five river occupancy permits were issued for park golf between 2000 and 2010. That rose to 77 between 2011 and 2020, then 135 between 2021 and 2024.
![IMAGE SLOT 5 — INFOGRAPHIC 3: Illegal courses on national waterways]
Enforcement followed. Naju bulldozed an unpermitted course on the Yeongsan River and announced a “zero tolerance” policy. Gyeongju demolished two illegal courses on the Hyeongsan River floodplain and restored the land. Changwon’s 90-hole Daesan complex received a restoration order, then completed its environmental assessments and reopened legally. As of May 2026, illegal occupation of small streams can trigger demolition without prior notice. Enforcement fines reach ₩10 million.
![IMAGE SLOT 6 — A flooded riverside walkway: why floodplain siting became a rule]
Then, on 25 February 2026, the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment rewrote the river occupancy rules outright. The amended standards require that usage opportunities be distributed fairly. In other words, “specific individuals or groups cannot monopolise” riverside facilities. In addition, courses may not obstruct river access or sit in flood-prone land. When a flood warning is issued, operators must dismantle or relocate them immediately. Pesticides and chemical fertilisers are now banned outright, and every operator must file an environmental management plan before approval.
Separately, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism commissioned a national standard model for park golf construction. The Korea Institute of Sport Science is running the study. That ₩150 million project runs from April to December 2026. It covers site conditions, legal procedure, user safety and physical specifications including hole length. In other words, Korea built 564 courses first and is now deciding what a course should be.
Resistance arrived from three directions at once.
The first is spatial. Civic groups in Sejong fought a plan to place a 36-hole course in the middle of Central Park. Their argument was blunt. A single-sport facility for one age group had no business occupying the city’s main shared green space. In Jeonju, residents blocked proposals at two separate sites, citing noise, parking shortages and environmental damage. One resident’s comment captured the subtext precisely: the neighbourhood needed facilities for younger people too. Chungbuk, meanwhile, halted expansion of its provincial course in July 2026 pending further review.
The second direction is generational. Players aged 60 and over dominate these courses almost completely. As a result, parks, riverbanks and even converted campgrounds are increasingly read as senior-only territory. The National Assembly Research Service named that friction directly. Therefore it recommended a shift from supply-driven expansion toward what it called “co-existence design”. The dynamic echoes the long-running argument over free subway rides for seniors. Few dispute the benefit in principle. Nevertheless, it turns contentious once the bill and the crowding become visible.
The third direction is fiscal, and it will decide how this ends. Seoul’s park golf budget rose from ₩2.716 billion in 2023 to ₩5.888 billion in 2026, a 116.8% increase. Construction spending within that grew 61.7%, from ₩2.453 billion to ₩3.966 billion. Operations and maintenance, however, went from ₩244 million to ₩1.581 billion. That is an increase of 548%.
![IMAGE SLOT 7 — INFOGRAPHIC 4: Seoul park golf budget, construction vs maintenance]
That last number is the whole problem in one line. Grass on a floodplain requires mowing, drainage, irrigation and post-flood repair forever. The construction cost, by contrast, is paid once. Municipalities that campaigned on building courses did not campaign on maintaining them. As a result, by August 2026 the national government had begun discouraging new municipal projects. Korean media had settled on a blunter phrase: wasted tax money.
Operations have been restructured in parallel. Many courses were originally handed to local park golf associations. Those groups ran them as members-only clubs, charging annual fees of ₩160,000 to ₩250,000. Predictably, they favoured their own members over other residents. Municipalities have been taking them back. Andong moved two courses to free direct operation from 2026. Chilgok took over seven courses in May 2025, adding ID verification for free resident access. Gumi placed eight courses under municipal management and saw daily use climb to between 2,000 and 3,000 visitors. Wonju began reviewing six courses for conversion in March 2026. The associations object, arguing they maintained these facilities with member money long before public budgets arrived.
While the policy argument continues, a real industry has formed underneath it.
The Korea park golf equipment market is now worth an estimated ₩300 to ₩400 billion, roughly $220 to $290 million. Moreover, one industry executive projects ₩1 trillion within five years. The pricing spread is startling for a sport played for two dollars a round. Entry-level clubs start around ₩100,000 to ₩300,000. Mid-range models from brands like Volvik and David run ₩500,000 to ₩1 million. Premium Japanese clubs from Honma reach ₩2 to ₩3 million. That is more than $2,000 for a single club used on a free municipal course.
Korean manufacturers moved fast into that gap. Before 2019 the domestic industry consisted of two or three companies. By 2026 there were 24 club makers. Of 71 certified brands, 53 are Korean, against a total of just 46 certified brands in 2023. Domestic products now hold roughly 60% of the market versus 40% for Japanese imports. Price explains most of it. A Korean beginner set runs ₩200,000 to ₩300,000, whereas a Japanese equivalent starts above ₩500,000.
Competitive play has professionalised too. Major tournaments now offer prize pools up to ₩200 million. Individual winners take ₩30 million, about $22,000, for a sport marketed as gentle exercise. A single national event drew 2,304 participants. Travel agencies have begun bundling overseas tournaments with tour packages, sending 300-player contingents to China. Corporate sponsors have arrived, and with them the usual questions about governance and prize-money transparency.
For foreign residents and visitors, the sport is more accessible than it looks, provided you know the rules of engagement.
Finding a course. Seoul operates several public courses, including one run by the Seoul Water Recycling Facilities Corporation in Gangseo-gu. Reservations go through the Seoul city public services booking portal, opening ten days before the play date. Hours run 09:00 to 18:00, with last entry at 17:00. Courses close on Mondays, and the season runs from 1 April to 31 December.
Cost. Expect ₩3,000 per round at Seoul municipal courses. Outside the capital, many courses are free or nearly free for local residents. Non-residents, though, may pay a small fee or need advance booking.
The residency catch. This is the one to plan around. So many courses were built as resident amenities that some require ID verification for free access. Others restrict or deprioritise outside players. Therefore, check the specific course’s policy before travelling, especially in provincial cities that recently converted to direct municipal operation.
Equipment. Courses require approved park golf clubs and balls. Rental availability varies, so confirming by phone is worth the trouble. A beginner set costs ₩200,000 to ₩300,000 if you decide to commit.
Etiquette. Groups of two to four are standard. Play moves briskly and morning slots fill first. You will almost certainly be the youngest person on the course by two decades. Regulars are, by broad consensus, delighted to explain the rules to a curious foreigner.
![IMAGE SLOT 9 — Lining up a putt: what a round actually looks like]
Strip away the budgets and the river permits and one fact remains. A country with the world’s lowest birth rate built 310 new sports facilities in six years. Every one of them was designed for people over sixty.
That is the real signal here. Korean municipalities are not primarily competing for young families any more. In much of the country, the decisive voting bloc is retired, healthy and expects public leisure infrastructure. Korea park golf is simply the first thing that bloc asked for loudly enough to get. Meanwhile the golf industry that defined Korean corporate leisure for thirty years is shrinking. Its cheaper, slower successor expands onto public land.
The next phase will be less fun than the last one. The national standard model arrives at the end of 2026, and river permits have tightened. Maintenance costs are compounding. Meanwhile the generational argument over who gets the riverbank has barely started. Some of these 564 courses will not survive the accounting. Even so, the direction of travel is not in serious doubt. Korea is aging faster than it is building anything else. For now, the country’s riverbanks belong to a game invented in a Hokkaido park in 1983.
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