Foreign tourists on Jan. 11 play a mini-curling game at a welcome center within the shopping district of Myeong-dong in Seoul's Jung-gu District in an event to mark the opening of the Korea Grand Sale 2024. (Visit Korea Committee's official Facebook page)

By Cao Thi Ha

More than 11 million foreign tourists visited Korea last year.

Citing tourism statistics from last month, the Korea Tourism Organization on Jan. 30 said the number of such visitors reached 11.03 million last year, up 245% from 2022 and recovering to 63% of the figure in 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

By country, Japan sent the most travelers with 2,320,000, followed by China with 2,020,000, the U.S. 1,090,000, Taiwan 960,000 and Vietnam 420,000.

Last month alone saw 1,037,000 foreign visitors as the country attracted over a million every month for the sixth straight month from July last year.

In December, China sent the most visitors (254,000), followed by Japan (196,000), Taiwan (81,000), the U.S. (78,000) and Singapore (56,000).

The number of visitors from Singapore last month jumped 33.6% from December 2019 and that from the U.S. inched up 1.2%.

By region, Europe and the Americas showed recovery of 90% from the pre-pandemic year of 2019 and the Middle East and Africa 86.5%.  

In addition, the number of Koreans who traveled abroad last year was 22,716,000, recovering to 79% of the figure in 2019.

shinn11@korea.kr