No. of foreign tourists surges in April

Tourists at Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul / Korea Times file

The number of foreigners who visited South Korea jumped 23.8 percent in April from a year earlier, data showed Thursday, mainly due to a spike in Chinese tourists.

The Korea Tourism Organization said 1.33 million foreigners visited South Korea last month, compared with 1.07 million in April last year.

The tourism promotion agency attributed the hike in inbound travelers of Chinese tourists following a partial lifting of a Chinese ban on group tours to South Korea.

China banned the sale of group tour packages to South Korea last year in retaliation against the deployment of an advanced U.S. missile defense system here.

In April, the number of visitors from China surged 60.9 percent on-year to 366,604, according to the latest data.

Before the diplomatic row, Chinese accounted for nearly half of all visitors to South Korea.

Meanwhile, the number of outbound South Korean travelers came to 2.23 million in April, up 11.3 percent from a year earlier, the tourism promotion agency said. (Yonhap)