By Lee Kyung-min
The most frequently searched subway stations by Chinese tourists to Korea is Myeongdong Station, data showed Thursday.
The data was from PENGTAI, a digital marketing agency for Chinese business, which analyzed some 140,000 search histories of Chinese tourists on a cellphone application related to subway information it developed, from Sept. 28- Oct. 7.
At 18 percent, Myeongdong was the most searched for station on the app, followed by Hongik University at 12 percent, Dongdaemun at 6 percent, Seoul Station at 5.7 percent and Incheon International Airport at 5.6 percent.
It was the first time that Incheon International Airport Station has been included in the top five, and the agency said it may be because many tourists use public transportation between the airport and their destinations.
Gangnam, Itaewon and Konkuk University stations had much higher popularity than the previous year. Gangnam is popular among Chinese tourists for shopping and plastic surgery. Itaewon has many hip restaurants operated by star chefs who often appear on TV and online shows. And, Konkuk University has a large shopping mall that opened earlier this year, the agency said.
The search volume of the application used to be around 300,000 per year from January and May, but dropped to 170,000 in June and July, presumably due to the outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome here. But it rebounded to 300,000 in August and hit 400,000 in September.