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Korean Port City Hopes Asian Games Will Put It on the Map

SEOUL, South Korea — Most visitors to South Korea land at Incheon International Airport, one of the world’s busiest, and immediately make the short journey to Seoul.

But for the next two weeks, organizers of the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon are hoping the event will keep plenty of people in the port city, if not draw them from the capital.

Incheon, about 25 kilometers west of Seoul and home to three million people, is ready to step out of the shadow of its giant neighbor and make a name for itself by hosting Asia’s biggest sporting event starting Friday.

“Incheon is trying to be an economic hub in the northeast Asia region,” Peter Baek, general manager of the Korea Automobile Racing Organization and a sports marketing expert, said via email. “They are trying to attract foreign investment. With the Asian Games, they want to put Incheon on the map.”

In these 17th Asian Games, 13,000 athletes for 45 countries will be participating in 36 sports with 439 gold medals up for grabs.

As a branding exercise, the Games have had their moments. In 1986, the event gave Seoul the platform to host a successful Olympics two years later. Doha’s 2006 Games were seen as a significant step in Qatar’s international ambitions, laying the foundation for the country’s successful bid to hold soccer’s World Cup in 2022.

“Incheon is Korea’s gateway to Asia and to the world,” Yoo Ji-hyeon, a spokeswoman for the Asian Games organizing committee, said by telephone. “It’s a dynamic and diverse city and has the infrastructure to host the Asian Games, and that will help attract investment and tourism to increase growth.”

But Incheon has the biggest debt of any of South Korea’s six major metropolitan areas. It spent about $2 billion for the Games, compared with the $20 billion spent by the Chinese city of Guangzhou when it held the event in 2010.

For Incheon, a city with continental ambitions and financial problems, it is crucial that the Games succeed.

There has been plenty of attention paid to slow ticket sales so far, even if organizers are sounding a positive note.

“As of Sept. 10, the opening ceremony had sold 46 percent of its tickets and average sales for all events are 30 percent, except soccer, and we presume that will rapidly increase after the group stage,” Yoo said.

Organizers said sales for badminton, equestrian events, judo, shooting and squash are encouraging, all events in which the host nation is expected to perform well.

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South Korean players after losing to Belgium in their last World Cup game in Brazil in June. South Korea finished last in their group, casting a pall over the country’s sporting mood, which many hope the Asian Games can help reverse.Credit...Diego Azubel/European Pressphoto Agency

Many empty seats are expected when it comes to less well-known sports. Sepaktakraw, a Southeast Asian version of volleyball played with the feet instead of hands, and kabaddi, a form of wrestling that originated in India, have yet to capture the public’s attention, at least when it comes to ticket sales.

“It is true that there is a small gap between the popular sports and the not-so popular sports, but we have promotional strategies in place,” Yoo said.

Baek was involved with Yeongnam, a city in southwestern South Korea, and its hosting of Formula One Grands Prix for four years, starting in 2010. In that period, it was estimated that organizers had lost about $185 million. The Yeongnam Grand Prix was taken off the Formula One calendar for the 2014 season.

“Tough cannot describe the sporting market in Korea — it is all about star names,” Baek said. “Even so, the organizing committee was a bit passive in terms of promoting the event, in my opinion. Maybe they focused on the rest of the Asian market, but it seems that the rest of Asia are not spending money to come to Incheon.”

Incheon’s desire to use the Asian Games to become a bigger player in the region could be made more difficult by a feeling that South Korea, as a whole, lacks enthusiasm for sporting events at the continental level.

“The collective thinking in Korea is more interested in world events,” said Chun Young-sub, a South Korean sports-marketing expert, who said he believes that the 2018 Winter Olympics, which will be held in Pyeongchang in the east of the country, will result in a different experience than the Asian Games.

“The Olympics are seen as a very hot event by the Korean public and government,” Chun said. “Even though they may not be profitable, Korea can achieve other goals, such as economic growth, community development, national branding and foreign investment.”

A good showing in Incheon could also help restore some of the feel-good factor around Korean sports after a poor showing at the soccer World Cup in Brazil in June and a Winter Olympics in Russia in February that did not meet national expectations.

“Compared to Vancouver 2010, the Korean performance in Sochi 2014 was a little disappointing,” said Baik Jung-hyun, chief sports producer at KBS, the state-funded national broadcaster. “We have invested heavily in the various winter sports, but we did not see the fruits of that.”

Baik said he believes that the presence at the Asian Games of North Korea, which is to send a delegation of 273 athletes, will help the tournament’s profile. Controversy erupted last week, however, when organizers had to remove the flags of the 45 competing nations from streets after conservative groups protested the presence of the North’s flag.

Publicity surrounding the North Korean contingent when they take part in sports in South Korea is nothing new. In 2003, a group of North Korean female cheerleaders took the Daegu Student Games by storm, generating publicity both at home and abroad. But for the Asian Games, Pyongyang canceled plans to send a similar squad of 350 fans after South Korea refused to pick up the bill, as it had 11 years ago.

“The Incheon Organizing Committee is sorry for the withdrawal of the cheerleaders, but it is not right for us to comment on North Korea’s decision,” Yoo said. “There is still time until the tournament starts, and so we hope that North Korea will send the cheerleaders as they originally proposed.”

The first of the flights bringing athletes and officials from Pyongyang landed at Incheon International Airport last week to plenty of attention from the media here. It was an encouraging start for the organizers, but as a whole, the Asian Games have remained a hard sell for Incheon.

A version of this article appears in print on   in The New York Times International Edition. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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