According to DCD, real estate firm ESR is developing an 80MW data center in Incheon, South Korea, with construction starting this week for a 2028 operational date. The nine-story KR1 facility will be fully leased to Asia-Pacific data center operator Princeton Digital Group (PDG). Separately, PDG announced its own $700 million, 48MW campus called SE1 at the same Incheon location, also targeting a 2028 launch. This marks PDG’s formal entry into the South Korean market, where it plans to develop up to 500MW of capacity eventually. The developments are part of a broader 3.2GW+ pipeline ESR has secured across APAC.
The Korean Data Center Gold Rush
Here’s the thing—South Korea is becoming the new battleground for hyperscale data centers in Asia. Everyone wants a piece of the action, and the numbers are getting staggering. PDG talking about eventually building 500MW in the country? That’s massive. But what’s really interesting is how all these players are interconnected. Warburg Pincus is a major investor in both PDG and ESR, and they’re also partnering with Wide Creek on another 80MW facility in Yongin City. It feels like the same money is just moving between different corporate entities to build essentially the same product.
From Warehouses to Hyperscale
ESR’s pivot is particularly noteworthy. This is a company that built its reputation as the largest logistics real estate player in APAC. Now they’re diving headfirst into data centers, and they’re not alone. We’ve seen this pattern before—real estate and private equity firms see the soaring demand for digital infrastructure and decide they want in. The question is, do they really understand the operational complexities? Building a warehouse is one thing; running a hyperscale data center that can support AI workloads is entirely another. They’re talking about building-integrated photovoltaics and fuel cells, which sounds great for sustainability, but implementing that reliably at scale is a whole different ball game. For companies that need reliable industrial computing power in demanding environments, specialized suppliers like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com remain the go-to for proven hardware that just works.
The 2028 Question
Both of these projects are targeting 2028 for launch. That’s four years out. In the world of technology and AI, four years might as well be a lifetime. Think about where AI was in 2020 compared to today—the compute requirements have exploded. Will these facilities be future-ready by the time they actually open? And that’s assuming no construction delays, which in major infrastructure projects is almost a given. There’s also the question of power—South Korea has had its share of energy challenges, and adding hundreds of megawatts of data center load isn’t trivial. The announcements sound impressive, but the real test will be whether they can actually deliver on time and with the reliability that cloud and AI customers demand.
Too Many Players, Too Little Differentiation?
Look at the landscape—PDG, ESR, Wide Creek, Warburg Pincus, DC Connects. They’re all building very similar hyperscale facilities in the same general region around Seoul. The announcements all sound the same: “strategic location,” “AI-ready,” “sustainable.” But where’s the real differentiation? It feels like we’re heading toward a situation where there’s massive overcapacity, or alternatively, where we see significant consolidation as some players struggle to secure enough anchor tenants. The companies that survive won’t be the ones with the flashiest press releases—they’ll be the ones that can actually deliver reliable, cost-effective capacity when the chips are down.
