{"id":2199902,"date":"2023-01-17T08:57:54","date_gmt":"2023-01-17T08:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nknews.org\/koreapro\/?p=2199902"},"modified":"2023-04-05T16:10:21","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T07:10:21","slug":"south-koreas-big-bet-on-domestic-tourism-may-struggle-without-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/koreapro.org\/2023\/01\/south-koreas-big-bet-on-domestic-tourism-may-struggle-without-china\/","title":{"rendered":"South Korea\u2019s big bet on domestic tourism may struggle without China"},"content":{"rendered":"
Emerging from the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, South Korea has ambitious plans to boost tourism in 2023 and beyond. But with Chinese travelers yet to return, South Korean tourism will struggle to reach its full potential.<\/span><\/p>\n At the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced that it <\/span>aims<\/span><\/a> to increase the number of foreign tourists from 970,000 in 2021 to 10 million in 2023 and 30 million by 2027. It also wants to increase income from tourism from $10.3 billion in 2021 to $16 billion in 2023 and $30 billion in 2027.<\/span><\/p>\n These are big jumps in a short time, but they might not be impossible. Tourists weren\u2019t coming to South Korea over the past few years due to its COVID-19 restrictions and the quarantines they might have to face on returning to their own countries. Now that most countries have lifted such restrictions, including the ROK, it\u2019s plausible that tourism could make a rebound.<\/span><\/p>\n Nevertheless, even in a post-pandemic world, these are still ambitious aims.<\/span><\/p>\n