Ticket counters for Japan-bound tourists at the Busan International Passenger Terminal in the country’s largest port city are quiet on Aug. 1, 2019, amid a civic campaign against Japanese tourism and goods, triggered by Japan’s export restrictions on South Korea. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Oct. 31 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of South Koreans staying at hotels and tourist inns in Japan halved in August from a year earlier, data showed Thursday, amid boycott campaign against Japanese products stemming from bitter feuds over trade and history.
The Japan Tourism Agency said the number of South Koreans at such accommodations decreased 49.2 percent in August year-on-year, according to Japan’s Kyodo news agency.
Among Japan’s 47 prefectures, 44 recorded decreases in the number of South Korean hotel guests. Nagasaki suffered the largest decrease of 77.5 percent during the period.
The tourism agency earlier said the number of South Korean travelers to Japan decreased 58.1 percent in September on-year.
South Korea and Japan have been locked in an unprecedented trade dispute since Tokyo tightened its control on exports of three industrial materials to Asia’s No.-4 economy in July, citing security issues.
Japan’s export restriction is widely seen as retaliation against a Seoul court’s ruling last year that ordered Japanese firms to compensate victims of their wartime forced labor, during Japan’s 1910-1945 brutal colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
South Koreans have been staging a boycott against Japanese products, calling for Tokyo to make a sincere move toward settling the historical issues.
(Yonhap)
