Jeju Air suspends Jeju-Fukuoka flights

By Kang Seung-woo

Jeju Air has temporarily suspended flights between Jeju Island and Japan's Fukuoka amid sluggish demand due to the “Boycott Japan” movement.

“We will suspend the service in January and February next year due to declining profitability as fewer Koreans travel to Japan,” a Jeju Air official said.

Tickets for the route are unavailable on the airline's website.

The decision comes six months after the nation's largest low-cost carrier opened the route in July, the same month the Japanese government announced trade restrictions against Korea. As a result, Koreans have stopped buying Japanese products and visiting the neighboring country. The nationwide campaign continues to grow.

According to the company, the route's average seat occupancy for July was 75 percent, but it has since declined from 70 percent in August to 40 percent in September. This month, it dropped below 30 percent despite a bargain 100,000 won ($86) round-trip fare.

Jeju Air slumped to a 17.4 billion won operating loss in the third quarter from a 37.8 billion won operating profit a year ago, while it posted a 30.1 billion won net loss from a 31.1 billion won net profit year-on-year.

Jeju Air is not the only local airline to put routes between the resort island and Japanese destinations on hold.

Since Nov. 1, Korean Air, the nation's largest full-service carrier, has suspended flights between Jeju and Narita and Jeju and Osaka due to lower demand.

There are now only two flights connecting Jeju to Japanese cities.

The number of Korean tourists visiting Japan fell by more than 60 percent in November from a year earlier, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), Thursday.

A total of 205,000 Koreans visited Japan last month ― a 65.1-percent year-on-year drop from 588,213 and the second-lowest monthly figure this year after last month's 197,300.

In the wake of Japan's trade retaliation over a spat about wartime forced labor, the number of Korean tourists traveling to Japan recorded a 7.6 percent year-on-year drop in July, followed by declines of 48 percent in August, 58.1 percent in September and 65.5 percent in October.

According to the JNTO, 5.33 million Koreans visited Japan between January and November, compared with 31.2 million last year.