South Korea posts record tourist arrivals in March amid BTS comeback

South Korea welcomed a record 2.06 million foreign visitors in March, led by Chinese arrivals, government data showed on Thursday, with tourism spending lifted by the comeback tour of Kpop supergroup BTS after a years-long hiatus.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said the monthly record helped lift first-quarter arrivals by 23% from a year ago to 4.76 million, also a record for a first quarter. It attributed the trend to the "worldwide popularity of (Korean) culture", despite turmoil in the Middle East due to the Iran war.

Chinese visitors made up the biggest share of visitors at 1.45 million, up 29% from a year earlier, followed by Japanese tourists at 940,915, up 20.2%. Visitors from Taiwan rose 37.7% to 544,503.

Foreign arrivals through regional airports jumped 49.7%, while the share of travellers visiting areas outside Seoul and its vicinity rose to 34.5%, from 31.3% a year earlier, the ministry said.

Foreign credit card spending rose 23% to 3.21 trillion won ($2.18 billion) in the quarter, the ministry said.

Separately, South Korean credit card company Hana Card estimated foreign nationals who bought tickets to attend recent BTS concerts spent about 55.5 billion won in South Korea between January 1 and April 12 in purchases, with average spending of 1.85 million won per visitor.

Hana Card tracked spending patterns of 30,000 foreign nationals who had bought BTS concert tickets from the group's first three shows of a world tour in Goyang, South Korea on April 9, 11 to 12, the Yonhap News Agency reported.

BTS, which helped make Korean pop music into a global phenomenon, released a new album "ARIRANG" in March after putting their group activities on hold in 2022 to complete mandatory military service.

The group performed a comeback concert in central Seoul in March, before launching their world tour, with analysts predicting ticket sales could rise as high as 2.7 trillion won.

($1 = 1,471.9800 won)

-Joyce Lee/Reuters