A third of foreign visitors to the country last year were aged 30 or younger. Shown are two Korea.net Honorary Reporters in May last year looking at seafood in Namhae-gun County, Gyeongsangbuk-do Province. (Korea.net DB)
By Kim Seon Ah
A third of foreign tourists in the country last year were aged 30 or younger.
The global popularity of Hallyu (Korean Wave) like K-pop is considered to have played a decisive role in lowering the age of such visitors.
The Korea Tourism Data Lab, the online information platform of the Korea Tourism Organization, on March 11 released data showing that 3.93 million of the 11.03 million foreign tourists who came last year were aged 30 or younger, or 35.6% of the overall figure.
Among the visitors in that demographic, 2.79 million (25.3%) were ages 21-30, 1.13 million (10.3%) 20 or younger, 2.27 million (20.6%) 31-40, 1.62 million (14.7%) 41-50, 1.35 million (12.2%) 51-60 and 1.11 million (10.1%) 61 or over. The data included 760,000 flight attendants.
In 2013, foreign tourists aged 30 or younger comprised 27.6% of the total, thus their share rose eight percentage points over the past decade.
By nationality, most international visitors aged 30 or under were from Japan with 42.3%, a big jump from 26.6% in 2013. Second were Chinese with 38.3%, up from 29.5%.
In the same age range, French tourists last year accounted for 43.6%, a jump of 15 percentage points from 2013. Double-digit rises were also seen in those from the U.K. with 34.4% (up 13.7 points), Germany 33.9% (13.9), the Netherlands 32.9% (14.1) and Italy 27.2% (16).
Mexican tourists aged 30 or younger saw their share jump from 26% in 2013 to 36.9% last year, while the figure for those from the U.S. rose from 25.8% to 28.5%.
Rising global interest in Korean culture like K-pop is considered the main reason for the growth in the number of younger visitors to Korea.
The Korea Culture and Tourism Institute on March 11 also announced the results of a study on some 4,000 foreign tourists in the country in last year’s fourth quarter. The think tank said that from October to December last year, those polled said experiencing Hallyu content was their most common reason for traveling to Korea with 31.9%.
sofiakim218@korea.kr
