Asia

Foreign tourists continues to decline in Korea

For the twelfth consecutive month that the Korean tourism is facing a sharp decline, mainly due to a plunge in the number of Chinese tourists. Tourists numbers dropped 16.5 per cent despite the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

The total number of inbound visitors reached only 1.05 million in February, which was largely attributed to a sharp decline in the number of Chinese nationals who visited the country, which stood at 590,790, down 41.5 percent on-year.

The number of Chinese tourists visiting has been on a constant decline following a diplomatic row between Seoul and Beijing over the deployment of a US anti-missile system. Though the the two countries agreed to normalize their bilateral ties, but little change has been felt by the local tourism industry.