Yangyang International Airport sits on the east coast of Gangwon, about two hours from Seoul. It has a 2,500-meter runway, an international terminal, and customs officers. In 2023 and 2024, fewer than 100,000 passengers a year walked through it. For comparison, Gangnam Station on Seoul’s Line 2 moves that many people before lunch. Korea regional airports are full of stories like this one, and Yangyang is not even the worst case. That title belongs to Muan, which has been closed for 21 months.
However, the more surprising fact is what happens next. Ten of the fourteen airports run by the Korea Airports Corporation lost money in 2025. Together, they burned through 554.9 billion won over five years. In the same breath, politicians in Busan, Daegu, Jeju, Jeolla and even the islands off Incheon are pushing seven or eight new airports. The combined price tag sits above 24 trillion won. To a foreign reader, that looks like a contradiction. To anyone who has watched Korean regional politics, it is the system working exactly as designed.
Ten of fourteen: the 2025 loss map of Korea regional airports
Start with the ledger, because the numbers are unusually clean. Data the Korea Airports Corporation submitted to the National Assembly in late September breaks down 2025 operating results airport by airport.
Muan lost 25.1 billion won, the largest deficit in the country. Yangyang followed at 20 billion, then Ulsan at 17.6 billion, Yeosu at 17.3 billion, and Pohang-Gyeongju at 13.9 billion. Further down the list, Gwangju lost 7.2 billion, Sacheon 6.5 billion, and Gunsan 5 billion. Wonju lost 4.7 billion, and Daegu a comparatively trivial 600 million. That is ten airports in the red.
Meanwhile, four airports carried everyone else. Gimhae in Busan earned 100.6 billion won in operating profit. Jeju earned 78.8 billion, Gimpo in western Seoul earned 57.7 billion, and Cheongju squeaked out 3.5 billion. In other words, the entire Korean airport deficit problem is subsidized by four runways. Two of them exist mainly because of the Seoul–Jeju route, the busiest domestic air corridor on Earth.
For a foreigner, the important context is ownership. Incheon, the airport you probably flew into, belongs to a separate state company. Every other civilian airport in the country is run by the Korea Airports Corporation. That public body pools revenue across all fourteen sites. Consequently, Gimhae’s profit and Muan’s loss land in the same account. There is no market signal telling any single airport to close.
₩555 billion in five years: the Korean airport deficit by the numbers
Zoom out from a single year and the pattern hardens. Between 2021 and 2025, the ten loss-making airports lost a combined 554.9 billion won, roughly 400 million US dollars.
Muan alone accounted for 112.9 billion won of that total. Yangyang followed at 90.2 billion, Yeosu at 77.9 billion, and Ulsan at 77.7 billion. Pohang-Gyeongju lost 66.3 billion, Gwangju 32.6 billion, and Sacheon 30.5 billion. In particular, notice that the four biggest losers are also the four airports with the fewest scheduled flights. Losses at these sites are not the result of a bad year; they are structural.
The corporation as a whole has actually improved, which makes the split more striking. Its operating loss shrank from 267.3 billion won in 2021 to the low tens of billions in 2025. The exact figure depends on which division you count. Strip Muan out of the 2025 figures, and the remaining thirteen airports posted a small operating profit. Nevertheless, the government has quietly routed about 1.2 trillion won of indirect support through the aviation special account over five years. That money keeps the network standing.
Compare that to the neighbor across the water. The Incheon International Airport Corporation reported an operating profit of 881.1 billion won for 2025. One airport company prints money; the other survives on cross-subsidy and a special account. That gap is the first thing to understand before we get to why Korea keeps building.
How Korea builds an airport: the political formula
Ask why ghost airports Korea has become a genre of domestic journalism. The answer starts with an election calendar rather than a demand forecast.
Yangyang is the textbook case. The idea surfaced as a campaign pledge in 1987, under the Roh Tae-woo government. Construction was pushed forward in the mid-1990s under Kim Young-sam, partly to serve the 1999 Winter Asian Games in Gangwon. The airport finally opened in April 2002 under Kim Dae-jung, three presidents after the promise was made. Planners had forecast 1.04 million annual passengers by the year 2000. The actual figure in 2002 was about 220,000, and it never came close to the projection afterward. Scheduled service stopped entirely in May 2023 and did not resume for more than two years.
Muan followed a similar script, only with the feasibility math adjusted along the way. The project began as a 1997 presidential campaign promise for the southwestern Jeolla region. When the cost-benefit ratio came in below the passing threshold, the assumptions were revised until it cleared. That is why Koreans still refer to it by the name of the local politician who championed it. As a result, Muan opened in 2007 with a runway sized for international traffic. For most of its life, it hosted a handful of daily flights.
Here is the formula, then. A presidential or gubernatorial candidate promises an airport to a region that feels left behind by Seoul. The feasibility study is bent until it passes. Construction spans two or three administrations, so nobody in office when it opens is the person who promised it. Finally, the Korea Airports Corporation absorbs the operating loss, and the same region asks for a bigger airport a decade later.
Muan, 21 months dark
No airport in Korea illustrates the cost of that formula more painfully than Muan, and the reason is not financial.
On December 29, 2024, Jeju Air Flight 2216 landed on its belly at Muan after a bird strike. It overran the runway and struck a concrete structure housing the localizer antenna. Of the 181 people on board, 179 died; only two crew members survived. It remains the deadliest aviation disaster on Korean soil. Moreover, it set off a national reckoning over why a solid concrete berm had been placed just beyond the runway end. A later broadcast simulation by MBC argued that without the berm, everyone on the aircraft would likely have survived.
The airport has been closed ever since. As of late September 2026, that is 21 months without a single commercial flight. For a national airport that was not physically destroyed, that is an unusual length of time. Initially, the closure was about the investigation and rebuilding the localizer. In June 2026, however, inspectors discovered a deeper problem. The asphalt layer of the runway had deteriorated about 15 centimeters down. Water seeping through surface cracks had caused peeling and delamination.
On September 22, the transport minister said the runway would be reinforced “through next year.” The Korea Airports Corporation is targeting completion in the second half of 2027. No reopening date exists. Meanwhile, the ministry had allocated fresh traffic rights only days earlier: Jeju Air received three weekly Muan–Shanghai frequencies, and Aero K received seven. Those rights currently point at an airport with no usable runway. Local groups accuse the government of using the runway as an excuse. In addition, they are furious that domestic flights from Gwangju will not fully transfer to Muan until the end of 2027.
For travelers, the practical takeaway is simple: Muan is not an option for the foreseeable future. For anyone studying Korea regional airports, it is the sharpest example of the pattern. The asset was expensive to build, expensive to run, and is now expensive to fix.
And yet, eight more: the Korea new airports list
You might expect a 555 billion won hole and a closed airport to slow the construction pipeline. Instead, the June 2026 local elections did the opposite. Nearly every major regional race featured an airport promise. Consequently, the national list of projects under construction or review now runs to seven or eight sites.
Gadeokdo, Busan. The flagship. Gadeokdo Airport is a 10.7 trillion won project to build a new international gateway on reclaimed land off Busan’s southwest coast. It was originally promised for 2029, to coincide with a World Expo bid that Busan lost. The tender failed four times because the deep-sea soft ground was considered too risky at the offered price. Eventually, a Daewoo E&C consortium accepted a negotiated contract in 2026, and the opening target moved to 2035. Industry estimates put the consortium’s likely loss at 400 to 500 billion won. Thirteen regional contractors have already warned they may drop out. The public construction authority created to manage the project is already in complete capital impairment. It holds 10.8 billion won in assets against 14.1 billion in liabilities.
Daegu–Gyeongbuk (TK) New Airport. A combined civil-military relocation with a total cost estimated above 20 trillion won, the military portion alone exceeding 11 trillion. The financing model asked private developers to build the new base in exchange for the old airport land. However, no private investor has signed on, because the real estate that was supposed to pay for it no longer looks bankable. Daegu is now lobbying to convert the whole thing into a national project funded by the central government. The finance ministry is resisting.
Jeju Second Airport. Budgeted at 5.45 trillion won and on the drawing board since 2015, the project is still in environmental review. The central objection is bird-strike risk, the same issue that brought down Flight 2216.
Saemangeum, Gunsan. A court ruled in 2025 that the bird-strike assessment was inadequate and canceled the construction approval. The government has appealed.
Baengnyeong, Heuksan, Ulleung, Seosan and Gyeonggi. Baengnyeong’s budget has roughly doubled, from 201.8 billion won to 391.3 billion, and its opening has slipped by more than four years. Heuksan is back in a feasibility re-study. Ulleung, an island airport being built on a filled-in bay, is past the halfway mark but running late and over budget. Seosan would convert an air force base. “Gyeonggi International Airport,” meanwhile, is a task force with five candidate towns and heavy local opposition in each of them.
Add it up and the combined construction bill for Korea new airports lands near 24 trillion won, or about 17 billion US dollars. That is roughly forty years of the current regional airport deficit, spent to build more of the same category of asset.
The Incheon paradox and the merger that died
A natural question follows. If Incheon earns 881 billion won a year and the Korea Airports Corporation loses money, why not merge them and let the profit cover the losses?
The idea has circulated for years, and it gained momentum after the Muan disaster as a fix for Korea regional airports. Critics argued the smaller corporation lacked the safety culture and balance sheet of its bigger sibling. Consequently, the government floated integration as part of the Seventh Airport Development Master Plan. In September 2026, the discussion was shelved.
Three arguments killed it. First, Incheon’s unions and management had no interest in absorbing a 555 billion won problem. Second, the Korea Airports Corporation’s own numbers were improving, which undercut the “chronic deficit” case for a takeover. Third, regional politicians realized that a merged giant headquartered near Seoul would be even less responsive to their airport demands. As a counter-proposal, some analysts now suggest splitting the corporation into regional airport companies aligned with the country’s emerging “five megaregions” framework. Each region would then own its losses rather than pooling them.
For readers following the Korean Air–Asiana merger, the parallel is instructive. Korea has consolidated its airlines into one dominant carrier while leaving its airport operators divided. As a result, the airline side now negotiates from a stronger position than the airport side on every regional route.
Where Korea regional airports are actually working
It would be lazy to end on the losses. After all, the same year that produced a 555 billion won deficit also produced the best international numbers Korea regional airports have ever recorded.
In the first half of 2026, regional airports handled about 9.8 million international passengers, up 26.1 percent from the year before. Cheongju led with growth above 44 percent, Jeju rose about 35 percent, and Gimhae about 23 percent, all record highs. By July, Korea had welcomed 12.8 million foreign visitors for the year. Roughly one in five of those first-half arrivals came through a regional airport rather than Incheon.
Two forces explain the surge. Low-cost carriers, squeezed at slot-constrained Incheon, have shifted capacity to Cheongju, Daegu and Gimhae, where landing fees are lower and gates are empty. In addition, the government has started to treat airports as tourism policy rather than transport policy. In 2025, 81.7 percent of foreign visitors concentrated in the Seoul metropolitan area. We explored that lopsidedness in our look at Korea’s inbound tourism boom. The culture ministry’s answer is a “five regional tourism zones” program built around regional airports for 2027 to 2030. Similarly, the transport ministry has been handing out route rights to regional gateways. The Yangyang–Shanghai frequencies awarded to Parata Air in April are one example.
Yangyang, in fact, offers the clearest sign that a single route can change the arithmetic. After twenty-eight months with no scheduled service, Parata Air launched a Yangyang–Jeju domestic route on September 30, 2025. In its first eleven months, it carried 177,741 passengers on 1,255 one-way flights. That is more traffic than the airport saw in the previous two years combined. It also puts Yangyang on track to clear 100,000 annual passengers for the first time since 2022. The losses will not vanish, since a 20 billion won gap does not close with one Jeju route. Still, it shows the difference between an airport with a reason to exist and one without.
The two-speed future: which airports survive 2030
Put the two halves of the story together and a picture emerges. Korea does not have a regional airport problem so much as a two-speed regional airport system.
On one track sit Gimhae, Jeju, Gimpo and, increasingly, Cheongju and Daegu. They have low-cost carrier bases, international route rights, and a catchment area of at least a million people. Growth there is real, and if Gadeokdo ever opens, Gimhae’s traffic will migrate rather than disappear. On the other track sit Yangyang, Muan, Ulsan, Yeosu, Pohang-Gyeongju, Sacheon, Gunsan and Wonju. Several of them are less than an hour by KTX from a bigger airport. Furthermore, the high-speed rail network keeps expanding, as we covered in our piece on Korea’s infrastructure challenge. Every new KTX line quietly erodes the case for a nearby runway.
Three indicators tell you which track an airport is on. First, annual passengers: below 300,000, an airport cannot cover its own fixed costs under any fee structure. Second, the number of scheduled low-cost carrier routes, because LCCs are the only airlines still opening regional service. Third, the cost-benefit ratio in the original feasibility study, and, more importantly, whether that ratio was revised upward before approval. Airports that failed the first test rarely pass in real life.
Korea has been here before with other categories of public infrastructure. The sinkhole crisis exposed decades of underinvestment in maintenance while new construction rolled on. The highway rest stop reform showed how a public asset can be run by layers of intermediaries until nobody is accountable for the price. In the airport version, a runway gets built for a forecast that was never honest. Then it stays open, because closing it would be an admission.
For travelers and investors: a practical reading of Korea regional airports
If you are flying into Korea and want to skip Seoul, here is how the map looks in late 2026.
Busan via Gimhae. The most useful regional gateway, with dense service to Japan, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and China. Note that the power bank rules that now apply nationwide started after a fire on an Air Busan flight here. Expect Gimhae to remain the southern hub until at least 2035.
Cheongju. About ninety minutes south of Seoul by rail, and the fastest-growing international airport in the country. It is the practical choice for central Korea and increasingly for budget travelers to Seoul itself, since fares out of Cheongju often undercut Incheon.
Daegu. A solid LCC base with Japanese and Southeast Asian routes. It is also the easiest entry point for Gyeongju and the southeast, as our Daegu travel guide explains.
Yangyang. Domestic only for now, but the Jeju route works. The airport is also the closest to the east coast beaches and ski resorts described in our Gangwon travel guide. If the Shanghai route launches, it becomes a genuine option for Chinese visitors heading to the mountains.
Muan, Yeosu, Ulsan, Pohang, Sacheon, Gunsan, Wonju. Check before you plan. Muan is closed until at least 2027. The others run a few domestic flights a day, mostly to Jeju, and KTX is usually faster.
For investors, the story is narrower and mostly about construction. Gadeokdo is the largest civil engineering contract in the country. The consortium’s expected loss is a live risk for Daewoo E&C and its partners. The TK project depends on a national-funding conversion that may not happen. Regional tourism, on the other hand, is a real growth theme. It runs through Cheongju and Gimhae rather than through any airport that does not exist yet.
The bottom line
Korea will spend the next decade building airports it may not need while subsidizing airports it cannot close. That is not because anyone in Seoul is confused about the numbers. Ten of fourteen lose money, five years cost 555 billion won, and Muan has been dark for 21 months. Yet the same government that knows all of this just allocated new route rights to a runway that does not work.
The reason is that in Korea, an airport is not a transport project. It is a promise from the capital to a province that feels forgotten, and promises like that are easier to make than to fund. The good news is that a handful of regional airports have finally found real demand. Budget airlines and a tourism policy that is trying to move visitors out of Seoul are driving it. The bad news is that Korea regional airports still come in two kinds, and the country keeps building the second kind.
