South Korea welcomed a record 2.06 million foreign visitors in March, led by Chinese arrivals, government data showed on Thursday, with tourism spending lifted by the comeback tour of Kpop supergroup BTS after a years-long hiatus.
Reuters – The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said the monthly record helped lift first-quarter arrivals by 23% from a year ago to 4.76 million, also a record for a first quarter. It attributed the trend to the "worldwide popularity of (Korean) culture", despite turmoil in the Middle East due to the Iran war.
Chinese visitors made up the biggest share of visitors at 1.45 million, up 29% from a year earlier, followed by Japanese tourists at 940,915, up 20.2%. Visitors from Taiwan rose 37.7% to 544,503.
Separately, South Korean credit card company Hana Card estimated foreign nationals who bought tickets to attend recent BTS concerts spent about 55.5 billion won in South Korea between January 1 and April 12 in purchases, with average spending of 1.85 million won per visitor.
