Normally, the visitors from Korea visiting Angeles City and Clark Freeport almost double in numbers once November sets in. Not in 2025. Local businessmen are hoping that 2026 will be better. My Korean friends intimated to me that local prices aren’t competitive with the Vietnam and Cambodia markets. That’s one of the reasons, and there few more.
Over the years I met many of them who stayed and invested in several businesses, mostly tourism related. Once I attended a birthday party on the rooftop of the Times Hotel, the newest addition among establishments in the Korean town and I got the feeling I was in Seoul. The motif was very Korean. The guests of birthday celebrant, businessman David Kim a fellow member of the Rotary Club of Angeles were a mix of locals and Koreano headed by Joo Yong-Kuk, Times Hotel owner, Chairman Choi Jong Pil, of the and Lee Tae-Ho and Ha Jin-Ho, directors of the Korean Community Association.
> It’s so interesting to know about why the migration of Koreans in Angeles City. The Koreans started arriving in droves in Angeles City since the late nineties and increased dramatically in the early two thousand when Clark airport opened to international flights. First they came in trickle and before we knew it, the Friendship road in the city which is located in barangay Anonas morphed into a ‘Korean town’. The area suddenly became like the Gangnam area of Seoul, Korea’s capital. More than a kilometer of restaurants, coffee shops, hotels, videoke, KTVs and grocery stores lining up both sides of the road. On any night with those colorful blinking lights and neon signs in Korean characters gave life to Friendship. Maybe in ten or twenty years more business establishments will extend up to barangays Sto.Domingo and barangay Calibutbut of Bacolor.
>> Why are they here? You may want to ask. Let’s review history.The Korean Peninsula was divided into two. The north and the south. The Korean war raged for three years, 1950 to 1953. The war divided the country into a communist northern half and an American- occupied southern half, the division marked by the 38th parallel as the demarcation line. And until today, there is no reunification between the two Koreas. There were several efforts but all failed. And it seems the peninsula will never be reunited. And North Korea President Kim Jong-Un keep updating his nuclear arsenal and firing those long range missiles.
Both Koreas progressed. While North Korean President Kim Jong Un keep stockpiling munitions, South Korean government boasts its electronics, automobile and telecom industries which is at par with Japan. South Korea suffered devastation in the fifties and Philippines was already the second most progressive nation after Japan. Today, let’s scratch our heads and ask WHAT HAPPENED?