No. of foreign tourists to Jeju tops 1 mil. for 1st time in 5 years

Jeju Worldwide Airport is crowded with vacationers and locals on the final day of the Chuseok vacation, Sept. 18, 2024. Newsis

The variety of international vacationers to the southern resort island of Jeju surpassed the 1 million mark final 12 months for the primary time in 5 years, knowledge confirmed Tuesday.

Out of a tentative complete of 13,783,911 individuals who visited Jeju final 12 months, 1,907,608, or 13.8 %, have been foreigners, in response to the Jeju Tourism Affiliation.

The variety of international vacationers peaked at over 3.6 million in 2016 earlier than dropping to the 1 million degree in 2017 amid China’s ban on group excursions over Korea’s internet hosting of a U.S. missile protection system.

The quantity dropped additional after the outbreak of COVID-19 to round 210,000 in 2020, 48,000 in 2021 and 86,000 in 2022 earlier than rebounding barely to 709,000 in 2023.

Chinese language vacationers accounted for the most important share of international vacationers to Jeju from January to November final 12 months, numbering 1,304,359, or 68.4 % of the full, adopted by Taiwanese at 149,518.

The affiliation attributed the rise to a rise within the variety of flights and cruises linking Jeju to different nations, significantly within the better China area.

Final 12 months, worldwide cruises docked at Jeju 274 occasions, bringing some 641,000 international vacationers to the island, up from 77 occasions in 2023.

There have been additionally 152 weekly direct flights connecting Jeju to fifteen international cities, together with 12 in China, as of final month.

„We count on the upward pattern of international vacationers to proceed as we see extra worldwide cruises stopping over at Jeju and extra direct flights connecting Jeju to different nations,“ a Jeju Tourism Group official stated. (Yonhap)