Foreign Tourist Arrivals In Seoul Jump 19 Pct Year-on-year In April

SEOUL, May 31 (Bernama-Yonhap) -- A total of 1.56 million foreign tourists visited Seoul, South Korea, in April, marking an 18.8 per cent increase from the same month last year, the metropolitan government said on Sunday, Yonhap News Agency reported.

Amid the increase, card spending by foreign visitors in Seoul reached 1.15 trillion won (US$763.1 million) in April, up 50.5 per cent from a year earlier, according to the announcement, which was based on data from the Korea Tourism Organisation and the culture ministry.

Of the nearly 2 trillion won in card spending by foreigners nationwide last month, Seoul accounted for the largest share at 72.3 per cent, excluding online purchases worth 397.4 billion won.

By category, spending at shopping malls reached 245.2 billion won, up 62.5 per cent from a year earlier, while medical spending rose 59.2 per cent to 192.1 billion won. Spending on beauty-related purchases increased by 35 per cent.

The southern district of Gangnam accounted for the largest share of spending in Seoul at 29.1 per cent, followed by the central Jung district at 27.5 per cent and the Mapo district at 7.4 per cent.

Chinese tourists represented the largest group of foreign visitors at 440,000, followed by Japanese visitors at 230,000, Taiwanese visitors at 150,000 and American visitors at 130,000.

The number of Taiwanese visitors increased 34.4 per cent from a year earlier, while the number of Chinese visitors was up 12.6 per cent compared with April 2019, before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the January-April period this year, the cumulative number of foreign visitors to Seoul reached 5.2 million, up 21.4 per cent from the same period last year, according to the latest findings.

-- BERNAMA-YONHAP