South Korea Welcomes More Than 17 Million Foreign Tourists in Nine Months
Foreign arrivals rose 21.5 percent in the first nine months of 2026, while inbound traveler spending climbed 47.7 percent and regional gateways handled a larger flow of visitors.
South Korea welcomed 17.11 million foreign tourists during the first nine months of 2026, putting the country on course to surpass its full-year total from 2025 as inbound travel continued to expand.
The January-to-September figure was 21.5 percent higher than the 14 million arrivals recorded in the same period a year earlier, according to data released Thursday by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. It was already equal to 90.3 percent of the 18.94 million foreign visitors received during all of last year. The ministry expects the 2026 total to move beyond that benchmark as early as October.
September alone brought 2.06 million foreign tourists, an increase of 21.1 percent from a year earlier. Monthly arrivals have exceeded 2 million five times this year. South Korea received 2.05 million visitors in March, 2.03 million in April, 2.09 million in July, 2.25 million in August and 2.06 million in September. The repeated crossings of that threshold point to sustained demand rather than a single seasonal spike.
China was the largest source market during the nine-month period, accounting for 5.47 million visitors. Japan followed with 3.99 million, while Taiwan supplied 1.86 million and Hong Kong 550,000. Arrivals from the Americas totaled 1.62 million, and 1.19 million visitors came from Europe.
The increase was also reflected in spending. Credit card purchases by inbound travelers reached 15.94 trillion won, or about $12 billion, from January through September. That represented a 47.7 percent increase from the same period in 2025, substantially outpacing the growth in visitor numbers.
Travel growth extended beyond the country’s main international gateway. Regional airports including Gimhae, Jeju, Cheongju and Daegu processed 3.24 million foreign arrivals, up 37.4 percent year on year. Another 1.58 million visitors entered through regional ports including Busan, Jeju, Seogwipo, Yeosu and Gunsan, an increase of 14.5 percent.
Regional airports accounted for 19 percent of all inbound foreign visitors, while regional ports represented 9.2 percent. Together, those gateways handled 28.2 percent of arrivals, showing that the tourism recovery is spreading across multiple entry points rather than being concentrated entirely around the Seoul metropolitan area.