Tourists wearing traditional Korean clothing, Hanbok, pose for photos at Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul on January 29th.Yonhap News
The state-run Tourism Promotion Agency announced Tuesday that the number of foreign tourists visiting South Korea has recovered to 63% of last year's pre-pandemic levels.
According to the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO), South Korea welcomed 11.03 million overseas tourists last year, an astonishing 245% increase from the previous year.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the number of arrivals plummeted from 17.5 million in 2019 to 2.52 million in 2020 and further to 970,000 in 2021. However, once South Korea began lifting most of its coronavirus restrictions in 2022, the number of people entering the country began to recover to 3.2 million in the same year, and exceeded 10 million in 2023.
Among foreigners who visited South Korea last year, Japanese tourists accounted for the largest number at 2.32 million, followed by Chinese (2.02 million), Americans (1.09 million), Taiwanese (960,000), and Vietnamese (4.2 million). 10,000,000 people).
In December alone, the number of foreign arrivals reached 1,037,000, exceeding the one million mark for the sixth consecutive month. Overall, the total number of foreign tourists visiting the country reached 63 percent of pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
Last year, a total of 22.72 million Korean tourists went abroad, about 79% of the 2019 level.
Last year, South Korea's tourism revenue increased by 26.4% from the previous year to $13.52 billion, and tourism expenditure increased by 47.8% to $22.4 billion. According to the agency, as a result, the tourism balance recorded a deficit of $8.88 billion. (Union)
