Atlanta-based Thrive Senior Living has launched a joint venture in Seoul, South Korea, with GH Partners, the newly formed company, Thrive-GPH, announced Tuesday.

This venture is so new that leadership roles have not been clearly defined yet, Thrive founder and CEO Jeramy Ragsdale told the McKnight’s Business Daily on Tuesday.

“I think the two owners of GHP and Thrive, that’s myself and Chaewook Im at GHP, will probably play more of a board role in this joint venture and probably have an executive team come on board here in the near future,” Ragsdale said.

Asia is a very attractive market for senior living right now, he said. 

“We’ve done some consulting in Asia in the last two or three years, and it’s really opened our eyes to some opportunities there,” Ragsdale said, describing Asia as “kind of at the crossroads of just rapid demographic growth in this aging population, especially in Korea.”

South Korea has a rapidly growing older adult population. By 2025, the country is expected to become a “super-aged society,” with more than 20% of the population being 65 years or older, data-gathering organization Statista reported. At the same time, according to Thrive-GPH, South Korea lags behind other developed nations in providing senior living options.

“And also you’ve got a wealthy and kind of financially sophisticated economy there, where rental real estate as a commercial asset type is already common. It’s not a pioneering thing to go and undertake,” Ragsdale said.

Several other macro and microeconomic trends in Korea right now “are pushing both from the government sector and the private sector the growth in the senior housing space,” he added.

“The biggest challenge to that growth is that there’s not currently a dedicated seniors housing property manager in Korea. And so as institutional equity begins to enter the space, they’re really looking for some boxes to be checked in terms of an experienced on-the-ground property management team,” he added. “But we also need seniors housing expertise, and that just doesn’t exist in the market today.”

That’s where the Thrive-GPH joint venture comes in. The concept came from a couple of institutional capital partners that are not owners or investors in the joint venture, according to Ragsdale.

“This is really done sort of as a custom solution to enable institutional capital to really be able to grow in this space in Korea,” he said.

Thrive-GHP initially will focus on active adult and independent living communities. The company will provide leasing, business administration, brand licensing, management services and direct care.

This is not Thrive’s first venture abroad. Ragsdale noted that the organization entered the UK market in England in 2016 with a joint venture. 

“We played a smaller role in that. That was not a 50/50 joint venture, but we made an investment, sat on a board and helped crank up a senior living operations platform there,” he said. “That’s been very successful. There’s now 12 care homes in that platform, and it continues to grow.” 

Although Thrive previously has done some consulting in Asia, Ragsdale said this joint venture marks the company’s entry into the Asian market in terms of principal interest.