Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
5,000 Chinese visit Korea on incentive trip
A group of Chinese tourists arrive at Incheon International Airport in Incheon, in this Sep. 23, 2019 file photo. Some 5,000 employees of a Chinese health food company have arrived in Korea on an incentive trip, the Korea Tourism Organization said Tuesday. /Korea Times photo by Park Hyung-ki
By Bahk Eun-ji
By Bahk Eun-ji
More than 5,000 employees of a Chinese health food company have arrived in Korea on an incentive trip, the largest number since the mainland restricted group travel to South Korea, Asia's fourth-largest economy, the state-run tourism promotion agency said Tuesday.
According to the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO), the employees of Yi Yong Tang began a six-day trip to various tourist attractions in Seoul and Incheon.
“This trip by the Chinese firm marked the largest one as a company's incentive travel trip since 2017,” a KTO official said.
The Chinese tourists are also scheduled to attend a special concert by K-pop singers Hwang Chi-yeol and Lee Jung-hyun in Incheon on Thursday.
Yi Yong Tang, based in Shenyang, China's Liaoning Province, distributes and manufactures health functional food and equipment. It posts annual sales of 2 billion Yuan ($287 million).
Last September, the KTO obtained the incentive tourism plan of Yi Yong Tang. Since then, the agency has been working with Incheon Metropolitan City and Incheon Tourism Organization to persuade the Chinese company to choose Incheon as their incentive trip destination.
With the recent resumption of incentive tours from China, the number of Chinese group tourists who had been absent due to the tourism boycott by China in retaliation against Seoul's decision to deploy the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system in 2016 is gradually recovering.
In December, more than 3,000 employees of W Cosmetics, a famous Chinese cosmetics manufacturing company, visited Korea on an incentive trip.
“We hope to achieve this year's goal to draw more than 20 million visitors from abroad, by strengthening our efforts to attract incentive tourists from promising markets in Asia,” the official said.
The KTO and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism aimed at attracting 20 million inbound visitors, including 7.5 million Chinese tourists.