Bo-eun leads the digital content team. She has covered foreign affairs, North Korea, tech, economy and gender issues at The Korea Times. She did a short stint at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, where she obtained a new perspective on news production and life. Small sources of joy for her are lounging in the sun, having a good latte and swimming.
Korea-bound Chinese set record in 2014
The downtown shopping district of Myeong-dong bustles with Chinese tourists Oct. 3, 2014 during China's Golden Week holiday. / Korea Times file
By Kim Bo-eun
If you recently paid a visit to the downtown shopping district of Myeong-dong, you might have got the feeling that you were somewhere in China instead of Seoul, due to the host of Chinese-speakers around you.
Data shows a record-high 6 million Chinese tourists visited Korea last year. According to the Korea Tourism Organization, 6,126,865 Chinese visited the country in 2014, up 41.6 percent from 4,236,869 a year earlier.
Accordingly, the number of tourists to Korea also grew 8.3 percent to 16,080,684 from 14,846,485 the previous year.
There especially was a peak in tourists in the holiday month of December. The number of tourists totaled 1,086,569, a 17 percent increase from the same month a year earlier. It is the first time the number of tourists surpassed 1 million in December.
This is attributed to the “Korea Grand Sale,” a state-funded event offering various discounts for tourists for shopping, dining and accommodation in cities across the country. The sale runs from December to February every year.
In fact, some 420,501 Chinese tourists who visited in December said they came to shop. That is a 52.2 percent increase in shopping-bound tourists compared to a year earlier. Among them, 52.4 percent were trendy Chinese in their 20s and 30s, with a high interest in hallyu.
Chinese tourists have also stepped up their expenditures here. According to the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade, the average expenditure of a Chinese tourist jumped 80 percent from $1,262 in 2008 to $2,272 in 2013.
Meanwhile, over the same period, the average expenditure of American tourists rose 7.3 percent from $1,370 to $1,470. In the case of Japanese tourists, their expenditures dropped 4.2 percent from $1,033 to $990.
The Chinese are estimated to have spent 7.67 trillion won, 49 percent of the total amount of tourist expenditures in 2013.
This year, some 8 million Chinese are expected to visit the country. The Korea Culture & Tourism Institute predicts a 28 percent increase in Chinese tourists this year, totaling to some 7.94 million, making up 49 percent of the total number of tourists.