With one million international travellers visiting South Korea in March, KTO (Korea Tourism Organisation) demonstrates that threats from North Korea does not affect so far tourists movements…
SEOUL- Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) issued earlier this month a reassuring message telling potential foreign travellers that the country remains stable despite the tensions with North Korea and its threat to attack the South. North and South Korea never signed a peace agreement since the Korean War ended in 1953. Verbal threats from the North -although the latest ones were particularly violent- failed so far to impress South Korea’s population, already used to North Korea rough diatribe. KTO reaffirms consequently that all tourism facilities were fully operational.
In a press release issued in early April, KTO stressed that the South Korean government was “taking all appropriate measures to resolve the situation peacefully”.
Interestingly, rising tensions did not affect at all the country’s tourism evolution so far. First because no travel advisory has been so far issued against travelling into South Korea.
Just in contrary. Last March, Korea welcomed for the second time in its history over a million travellers in a single month. Inbound arrivals increased by 11.9 per cent to an all time high of one million visitors in March. Visitor arrivals from China and Singapore grew for example by 56 per cent and almost 29 per cent respectively. The jump in Chinese travellers can be explained by political tensions between China and Japan with many Chinese holiday makers switching their travel plan from Japan to Korea.
The only country showing a marked decline is in fact Japan. Many factors explain the negative trend from Japan. Japan decline comes from a combination of factors such the low yen, political tensions while the verbal conflict with North Korea remained a neglecting element from Japan visitors’ collapse. So far this yhear, total arrivals from Japan are down by over 22 per cent. Last year, Korean travellers topped 3.2 million to Japan. With a drop in 22 per cent, total arrivals from Korea could be done to 2.5 million this year. The objective of welcoming 17 million international travellers in 2017 is unlikely to be reached now…
Luc Citrinot a French national is a freelance journalist and consultant in tourism and air transport with over 20 years experience. Based in Paris and Bangkok, he works for various travel and air transport trade publications in Europe and Asia.
