Korea rolls out red carpet for BTS fans, travelers at Gimhae airport

BTS accepts the Artist of the Year award onstage during the 52nd American Music Awards at MGM Grand Garden Arena, in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, May 25. AFP-Yonhap

Korea is launching a targeted "Welcome Week" hospitality campaign at Gimhae International Airport in Busan to greet incoming travelers, capitalizing on an expected surge of international visitors ahead of a massive K-pop event, the government said Monday.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, in coordination with the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) and the Visit Korea Committee, will run the special airport campaign from June 1 to 14. While the government held its primary spring welcome events during the peak travel windows of late April and early May, officials added this specific two-week iteration to the calendar to accommodate a massive wave of inbound travelers arriving for megastar K-pop group BTS’ upcoming stadium concerts. The shows, titled "BTS WORLD TOUR ‘ARIRANG’ IN BUSAN," are scheduled for June 12 and 13 at the Busan Asiad Main Stadium.

Arriving passengers will be greeted by multilingual hospitality booths on the first floor of the airport, offering travel assistance, regional tourism information and on-site booking promotions for local themed tours. Travelers will also receive physical "Welcome Kits" packed with maps, souvenirs and Korean food samples. For those departing, the ministry is installing digital send-off screens near the second-floor departure gates and distributing goodbye cards with traditional cultural gifts to leave a lasting positive impression of the country.

Central to the campaign is a digital push to steer travelers toward regional destinations outside of Seoul. Through QR codes printed on the welcome cards, visitors will be directly linked to the state-run VisitKorea platform, which has specialized content in eight languages. Features include an "ARMY Guide to Busan" highlighting landmarks connected to BTS, transit guides detailing routes to and from the concert venue and critical safety guidelines outlining crowd control measures and traffic updates.

The push comes as Korea experiences a major post-pandemic travel rebound. Culture ministry officials noted that inbound visitor numbers from January to April of this year hit an all-time high. The government plans to leverage this momentum by upgrading regional tourism infrastructure and expanding overseas promotion to ensure that sustainable growth extends into the provinces.

This article was published with the assistance of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.