Muslim Prayer Room to Open in Gangneung in Time for PyeongChang Olympics
The prayer room ― made from converted containers ― will operate from February. Muslims are obliged to pray five times a day, a duty called Salat.
The move is in response to a growing number of Muslim tourists, mostly from Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The number of Muslim tourists to Korea reached 930,000 last year, a huge jump from 540,000 in 2012.
The seven-meter-long, 2.8-meter-wide, 3.3-meter-high room consists of two parts ― a tub where visitors can wash their feet ― a ritual before prayer ― and a space for five to six people to pray.
Copies of the Quran, Islam’s central religious text, will be provided, as will an air conditioner and electric heater.
There are already prayer rooms at tourist sites, such as major international airports, KTX stations across the country, Nami Island and the Korean Folk Village.
The government is catering more to Muslim tourists in the midst of a decline in Chinese tourists due to a political conflict over a US anti-missile defense system in Korea.
The number of Chinese tourists to Korea plunged 66.4 percent in June 2017 from a year earlier, after Beijing’s de facto order for Chinese tour agencies to stop group tours to Korea for seven months until November 2017.
Source: Korea Times
