Korea Passes Last Year’s Visitors This Month

If you are going to Korea this fall, the year you are joining is already close to the size of all of last year, and October is still ahead.

Through September, 17.11 million foreign visitors had arrived. That is 21.5 percent more than the 14.08 million at the same point in 2025. On Thursday the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said the total should pass last year’s full count, 18.94 million, during October.

The gap left is smaller than the month that just ended. What remains of last year’s total is 1.83 million people. September brought 2.06 million. An ordinary October gets there.

August was bigger, at 2.25 million in the ministry’s previous release. September was the fifth month this year above 2 million, after March, April, July, and August. August can stay the biggest month.

Most of those visitors came from nearby. China accounted for about a third of everyone who arrived: 5.47 million people, up 29 percent. Japan was next, at 3.12 million, up 17 percent. Taiwan grew faster than either, to 1.86 million people, up 32 percent.

A trip from the United States is part of the Americas total: 1.62 million people, up 12 percent. Europe was 1.19 million, up 20 percent. China and Taiwan grew more than twice as fast as the Americas. That mix is why a popular Seoul weekend fills from several directions at once.

The money outran the arrivals. Spending on tourism cards reached 15.94 trillion won through September, up 47.7 percent from 10.79 trillion the year before. At about 1,325 won to the dollar on Friday morning, that is roughly $12 billion.

Arrivals rose 21.5 percent. The cards rose more than twice as fast.

Your table is in there somewhere, along with every other tourism purchase on a card, including ones made online. Cash is missing. So is any way to tell whether each person spent more than last year. The busiest card month was May, about 2.12 trillion won, back in the spring.

Visitors are also landing outside Seoul. Gimhae, Jeju, Cheongju, and Daegu handled 3.24 million people, up 37 percent from last year. That is about 19 percent of all arrivals. Regional seaports, Busan and Jeju among them, handled 1.58 million, up 14.5 percent. Airports and seaports outside Seoul, together, were 28 percent of the total.

A Gimhae ticket gets you to Busan’s airport. The ministry counted the landing. If you want a table in Seoul, reserve it for the week you mean. If the night is in Busan, reserve that too.

When the dates are already set, the fare has its own day. On Korean Air, buy through October 31 and this month’s fuel charge still applies, even if the flight leaves later.