Ten reasons why Korea is just the ticket

Tickets for next summer?s World Cup in South Korea and Japan go on sale today. With just 256 days to go before the start of the world?s biggest football bonanza, it is likely that the ?venue-specific? tickets, costing between US$60 and US$675 (£40-£460) will sell out fast.

FIFA, the sport?s world governing body, have selected an unpreposessing little office in Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire, to handle UK sales, but the matches themselves will be at considerably more impressive locations. Whereas the situation regarding our own national stadium has lurched from chaos to farce, the Koreans have just got on with the job. They have raised £1.03 billion and built 10 new stadiums from Seoul and Suwon in the north to the resort island of Cheju in the south with a total capacity of 472,000. Half of the new stadia will have been built in three years or less in a demonstration of concerted activity and decisive action that our own Football Association and Government would do well to emulate.

Yesterday, South Korea?s fifth new stadium, in the south-eastern coastal city of Pusan, was officially opened with the national side playing an exhibition match against Nigeria. The football-only stadium, described in the official press release as ?a cross between a flying saucer and a jellyfish? will also be used as the principal location for next year?s Asian Games.

On Saturday, a fourth new stadium, in the western city of Taejon, was also declared open with a match against the Nigerians, who must be getting used to the smell of fresh paint. This new ground, with a capacity of 41,651, is the first of six to open in the space of the next 12 weeks.

Four of the six new arenas (average capacity 53,013) will have been built in less than three years.

Chung Mong-Joon, president of the Korean FA, promises that the result of this building frenzy will be facilities ?that are truly theatres of dreams?. The quickest South Korean construction project was completed in only 31 months. The stadium, at Chungju, holds nearly 64,000 and cost £64m; Portugal are the visitors to celebrate its official opening on 8 November.

Four weeks later, the USA will visit the most exotically located new ground at Sogwipo to play South Korea in the stadium?s inaugural match. The ground is located on the island of Cheju, due south of the Korean peninsular; it has been built for £73m in less than three years on former tangerine groves between the ocean and the now extinct volcano of Mount Halla. To make it more attractive to visitors, the Koreans added on a water park and a shopping village.