SEOUL, Mar. 21 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea is beefing up efforts to attract foreign tourists in line with the upcoming flowering season, the country’s tourism promotion agency said Wednesday. The Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) said it has developed various programs targeting foreign visitors during April and May, and has been actively promoting them at [...]
SEOUL, Mar. 21 (Korea Bizwire) — Foreigners-only casinos in South Korea have taken a big hit from the fallout of a diplomatic row between Seoul and Beijing over the deployment of an advanced missile defense shield here, industry sources said Wednesday. In March last year, China banned the sale of package tours to South Korea [...]
SEOUL, March 16 (Korea Bizwire) – The number of foreigners who experienced Buddhist temple stay programs in South Korea increased by more than a quarter in 2017 from a year ago, Buddhist officials said Friday. A total of 70,910 foreigners participated in temple stay programs last year run by the Jogye Order, South Korea’s largest Buddhist group. The figure represents a 27-percent increase from [...]
SEOUL, March 14 (Korea Bizwire) — Nearly 14,000 students at American universities are studying Korean. Citing a report by the Modern Language Association (MLA) that analyzed foreign language study at universities, various media channels reported 13,936 students were taking Korean language courses at 2,669 U.S. universities in 2016. Korean was the 11th most studied language. Spanish [...]
SEOUL, March 13 (Korea Bizwire) — The Seoul Metropolitan Government said on March 12 that it is preparing to build prayer rooms for Muslims in a couple of the city’s major tourist areas, with the rooms expected to be available for use as early as this summer. The reason South Korea’s largest city is rolling [...]
SEOUL, March 12 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of foreigners who visited South Korea in February marked a sharp decline from a year ago despite its hosting of the Winter Olympics in the alpine town of PyeongChang, data from the justice ministry showed Monday. According to the data, 1,077,903 foreigners entered the country last month, [...]
SEOUL, March 6 (Korea Bizwire) — Tourists from China spent an average of US$3,007 in South Korea last year, a survey showed Tuesday, with duty-free shops and cosmetics stores as the most popular shopping locations here. The average on-location spending by Chinese tourists during their visits to South Korea, excluding tour group fees and costs [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 28 (Korea Bizwire) – The record-setting sales at local duty-free shops last month were due heavily to private vendors, a likely sign of an abnormal and fleeting pickup in business, industry sources said Wednesday. The duty-free stores recorded sales of US$1.38 billion in January, up 42.4 percent from the same month a year [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s air passenger traffic reached a new record high last year on growing travel demand, while flight delays declined due to improved schedule management, the transport ministry said Sunday. In 2017, the country’s passenger traffic on domestic and international routes stood at 109.36 million, up 5.2 percent from [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 23 (Korea Bizwire) – More South Koreans over 60 years of age are traveling abroad than before, as the number of active seniors is on the rise. Recent data from Mode Tour has revealed that the number of South Korean seniors who traveled abroad last year accounted for 18.5 percent of all outbound [...]