SOUTH KOREA. Seoul Incheon Airport has opened a shopping mall and theme park rolled into one.
The Air Joy shopping mall occupies over 16 acres (6.5ha) and is made up of three floors underground and nine above. Local supermarket chain E-Mart was the first to open an outlet during the initial opening in April, followed by a grand opening of all floors in June.
The airport authority said Air Joy aspired to be among the world’s first “Shoppertainment Malls”, where residents from the Incheon area and international travellers are given “a feast for the eyes, a gamut of entertainment and things to enjoy, as they look and browse for their favourite shopping items”.
Highlights include four themed areas. The World Star Museum, dubbed the airport’s answer to Madame Tussaud’s, features wax likenesses of 41 celebrities including David Beckham, Madonna, Asia’s superstar Bae Yong-joon and Park Chan-ho.
The Toy Story 3 area displays toys such as robots that climb walls and a collection of 1,000 Smurfs. Memory Lane is an area where people can experience life as it was in Korea from the 1950s to the 1970s in make-believe comic book shops, coffee shops with a coal stove, rice mills and small shops; they can buy traditional snacks and play games.
The Atrium is a multi-storey viewing area constructed in an open-space arrangement equipped with see-through elevators. Here audiences can view performances on the first floor from terraces above.
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