Fewer Koreans play golf. A membership still costs ₩2.9bn

In South Korea, the most expensive thing about golf is not the clubs, the green fees or the obligatory post-round dinner. It is the right to book a Saturday morning tee time.

As of September, four clubs near Seoul charged more than ₩2bn, about $1.5mn, for a membership, according to the Segye Ilbo. A year earlier there were two. The Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea, at Songdo, led at about ₩2.9bn. Nambu Country Club, East Valley and Namchon clustered at ₩2.4bn to ₩2.5bn.

These are second-hand prices. Korean golf memberships are bought and sold through brokers, like shares or flats, and quoted daily.

An index at a record

The broker Ace Membership publishes an index of those prices, the ACEPI. It reached a record 1,387.9 in February and passed 1,400 in April, at 1,415.7, for the first time since 2008.

That is odd, because Koreans are playing less golf. The pandemic sent a generation of younger players to the courses, and they have drifted away. National course visits fell 8.2 per cent between 2022 and 2025, from 50.58mn to 46.41mn, the Segye Ilbo reports.

The resolution of the paradox is scarcity. Nambu’s membership is capped at 194. The members who own those places rarely sell, and when they do, the buyers are mostly companies.

Weekends only

The detail that explains the market is in the trading data. In March, 744 of 810 transactions, or 92 per cent, were in regular memberships that include weekend access. The cheaper weekday-only memberships barely move.

The Segye Ilbo attributes that to who is buying: companies that use memberships to entertain clients and reward executives, and investors who treat them as a store of value. A Saturday round at a club near Seoul, arranged at short notice, is a form of currency in Korean business.

Corporate buyers compete for the handful of places that guarantee one.

The Segye Ilbo put it neatly: the best memberships now rival the price of a prime flat in Seoul, and behave in much the same way. Demand concentrates on a few scarce addresses near the capital. Everything else, from provincial clubs to weekday memberships, is at the mercy of a cooling economy.

What you get

For ₩2.5bn, a member does not get free golf. Green fees are lower for members, but still payable. What the money buys is priority: the ability to book the best times, for yourself and your guests, at a course within an hour of Gangnam.

Brokers quoted by the Korea Economic Daily expect the gap between the premium clubs and the rest to widen further. For the few who own a Nambu membership, that is good news. For the average Korean golfer, now playing a little less often, it is another reason to book the driving range instead.

Sources

• Segye Ilbo: golf memberships rival Seoul flats, unfazed past ₩2.5bn (17 Sep 2026)
• Korea Economic Daily: golf memberships, like property, concentrate on the best addresses (Apr 2026)
• Golf Economy News: January 2026 membership price rankings
• Golf Economy News: February 2026 membership price rankings

Cover image: Ben Scripps, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped.