Key facts
- South Korea welcomed 206,542 foreign cruise ship passengers and crew in May.
- This figure represents a 13.4% increase from April and a 12.2% increase year-over-year.
- Chinese nationals accounted for 45.1% of the total foreign cruise visitors.
- Seogwipo on Jeju Island saw the highest number of arrivals, followed by Busan.
- Cumulative foreign arrivals for the first five months of the year reached 709,000.
SEOUL, July 6 (Yonhap) -- The number of foreign visitors arriving in South Korea by cruise ship surpassed 200,000 for the first time in May, driven largely by Chinese travelers, official data showed Monday.
A total of 206,542 foreign passengers and crew disembarked from cruise ships in May, marking a 13.4 percent increase from the previous month and a 12.2 percent rise from a year earlier, according to the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO).
Monthly arrivals have shown a consistent upward trend since late last year, growing from 56,000 in December to 57,000 in January and 112,000 in February, before exceeding the 200,000 mark in May.
For the first five months of the year, cumulative foreign arrivals reached 709,000, a 5.9 percent increase compared to the same period in 2025. If the current trend persists, the annual total could surpass the all-time record of 1.6 million visitors set last year.
By port, Seogwipo on the southern resort island of Jeju recorded the highest number of arrivals in May with 84,000 visitors. Busan followed with 78,000, Incheon with 25,000, and Jeju with 17,000. Nearly half of all cruise visitors entered via Jeju.
Chinese nationals constituted the largest segment of cruise visitors, accounting for 93,000, or 45.1 percent of the total. Visitors from the Philippines and Japan each numbered 23,000. Indonesia and India followed, with 17,000 and 11,000 visitors, respectively.