“It looks small from the sky, but it’s a size that you can’t see from the ground,” said Naoko Yoshimoto, an overseas public relations officer at the Japan International Exposition Association (organizing committee). “It’s a symbolic building that shows the Osaka Expo ideology of ‘various one.'”
The Japanese government expects 28.5 million visitors to visit the Osaka Expo, which will be held from April 13 to October 13, 2025, and 3.5 million of them will be foreigners. The economy is also expected to reach 2 trillion yen (about 18.12 trillion won).
South Korea, which is striving to host the Busan Expo in 2030, was the first country to submit a plan to build an exhibition hall to Japan and announced a bid in July this year. Korea’s strategy is to actively cooperate with the Osaka Expo to attract support from each country for hosting the Busan Expo.
Osaka, which hosted Asia’s first expo in 1970, is busy preparing for its second expo in 55 years. Yumeshima was originally abandoned after giving up trying to host the 2008 Olympics, but the expo drew global attention. Next to the Expo, there is a famous theme park Universal Studio Japan (USJ), which can be linked to tourism.
In Japan, 13 large companies, including NTT and Sumitomo, are sequentially disclosing their exhibition hall plans. NTT uses high-speed next-generation networks to show technologies that even feel the touch. Sumitomo decided to fill the interior of the exhibition hall with trees reproduced by digital technology to provide an opportunity to feel nature and think about environmental issues. The Gundam Exhibition Hall, which ambitiously prepares with “killer content,” has also been unveiled.
The overseas exhibition hall, called the “flower of the expo,” is still poorly prepared, raising concerns. While 60 countries, including South Korea and the United States, are planning to build independent exhibition halls that show each country’s unique individuality and technology, only 20 countries have saved exhibition builders. Expedition construction costs, which originally set 125 billion yen, have increased to 235 billion yen.
KS CHOI
US ASIA JOURNAL
