Jeonju City, Wansan Bunker The Space Rapidly Emerging as a Tourist Attraction

Admission Fees:
10,000 KRW for Adults,
8,000 KRW for Teenagers,
5,000 KRW for Children

Wansan Bunker The Space (hereafter Wansan Bunker) is rapidly emerging as a new tourist attraction in Jeonju.

According to the city on the 4th, Wansan Bunker, which opened on the 5th of last month, has attracted continued attention from citizens and tourists, drawing a total of about 31,000 visitors in about a month as of the 3rd.

Wansan Bunker The Space is rapidly emerging as a new tourist attraction in Jeonju. Photo by Jeonju City

Wansan Bunker, which has been transformed from an air-raid shelter into a cultural tourism facility, recorded an average of about 770 visitors per weekday and 2,240 per holiday. The number of weekly visitors, which was around 5,000 in the opening week, nearly doubled to 10,739 in the last week of February, showing a steady increase each week.

Notably, 45% of all visitors to Wansan Bunker were found to be residents from outside the region, establishing the site as a new hub for tourism in Jeonju. The cumulative revenue since opening has reached approximately 100 million KRW, injecting vitality into the local economy.

The city expects that visitors to Wansan Bunker will also frequent nearby restaurants and cafes, contributing to the revitalization of the stagnant commercial districts in the old downtown area.

Wansan Bunker was originally built in 1973 as a wartime administrative shelter and was abandoned after losing its purpose in 2006. Jeonju City repurposed it into a new media art cultural tourism facility under the theme, "Visitors explore the multiverse connected to the closed Wansan Bunker." Covering a total area of 3,178.62 square meters, with a viewing path of 280 meters in length and a height of 3 to 5 meters, Wansan Bunker consists of 10 media art content rooms?including the signature "Gate of Dimensions" made with LEDs and mirrors?as well as a cafe and a souvenir shop.

Wansan Bunker is open from Tuesday to Sunday each week. Admission is 10,000 KRW for adults, 8,000 KRW for teenagers, and 5,000 KRW for children. Jeonju citizens can enter at a discounted price of 2,000 KRW off, and the city is currently running a special promotion to commemorate the opening, allowing one additional person to enter free with the purchase of one ticket.

To improve the visitor experience given the facility's origins as an air-raid shelter, the city has secured an additional 206 parking spaces by creating a dedicated parking lot for Wansan Bunker, expanding the temporary public parking lot near Wansan Elementary School, and establishing street parking along Jeonjuchun. For the convenience of tourists visiting Jeonju Hanok Village, a shuttle bus (one vehicle) operates between Taejo-ro bus stop and Wansan Bunker on weekends and public holidays.

Going forward, the city plans to expand the road section from Wansan Elementary School to Wansan Bunker to Geoseong Apartment Complex from a single lane to a two-lane road to further improve visitor convenience.

No Eunyoung, Director of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Jeonju City, said, "We expect that Jeonju tourism, which has been centered around Hanok Village, will further expand through projects such as Wansan Bunker, Hanbitmaru Park, and the Ajung Lake tourism development project, laying the foundation for expanding tourism infrastructure throughout the old downtown area."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.