Foreign visitors to Korea reach 1.63 million in May

WAM
30 Jun 2025, 11:05 GMT+10

SEOUL, 30th June, 2025 (WAM) -- The Korea Tourism Organisation announced that the number of foreign tourists who visited the country last month reached 1.63 million, marking a 14.9 percent increase compared to the same month last year.

This figure represents 109.7 percent of the visitor numbers recorded in the same month of 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

By nationality, Chinese visitors accounted for the largest share with 484,000 tourists, followed by Japanese with 292,000, Taiwanese with 150,000, Americans with 132,000, and Filipinos with 61,000.

Tourists from Taiwan, the United States, and the Philippines increased by 47.6 percent, 38.1 percent, and 19.8 percent, respectively, compared to May 2019. Japanese tourists also grew slightly by 1.9 percent, while Chinese visitors reached 96.8 percent of the pre-pandemic level.

From January to May this year, the cumulative number of foreign visitors totalled 7.21 million, up 14.7 percent from the previous year and recovering to 103.5 percent of the 2019 figure for the same period. The top countries by visitor numbers during this period were China (2.05 million), Japan (1.33 million), Taiwan (700,000), and the United States (560,000).

Meanwhile, 2.39 million Koreans travelled abroad last month, up 5.4 percent from the same month last year and reaching 99.6 percent of the pre-pandemic level in May 2019. The total outbound travellers from January to May numbered 12.34 million, or 98.6 percent of the 2019 figure for the same period.

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