DataInbound Foreign Visitors
Travel Retail
Inbound Foreign Visitors
Annual foreign entries into Korea (2018–2025) plus 2026 year-to-date through July — a key leading indicator for duty-free and inbound consumption demand.
Source — Ministry of Justice immigration statistics (foreign entries)
2026 Inbound Visitors, Year to Date
Unit: persons · through July 2026 · KTO tourism statistics (provisional)
Jan–Jul cumulative
12,803,142
+21.3% YoY · 129.5% of 2019
July
2,093,223
+20.8% YoY · 144.6% of July 2019
H1 (Jan–Jun)
10,709,919
+21.3% YoY
| Market | July | July YoY | Jan–Jul cumulative |
|---|---|---|---|
| China | 776,639 | +29.0% | 3,988,430 |
| Japan | 330,385 | +10.2% | 2,280,159 |
| Taiwan | 260,532 | +30.7% | 1,410,978 |
| United States | 150,449 | +14.1% | 962,423 |
| Hong Kong | 76,237 | +18.7% | 416,888 |
Data Notes
- These are Korea Tourism Organization tourist arrivals (provisional), which differ in scope from the Ministry of Justice foreign-entry counts in the annual chart and table — do not compare the two directly.
- The Jan–Jul totals are H1 plus July as reported in press coverage of KTO releases; monthly figures for January–May were not collected here.
Foreign Entries (reference indicator for inbound tourism)
Unit: persons (annual total) · 2018–2025
2018
15.63M
2019
17.88M
2020
2.66M
2021
1.04M
2022
3.39M
2023
11.5M
2024
16.97M
2025
19.58M
Annual Entry/Exit Detail
Unit: persons · citizens/foreigners · Ministry of Justice immigration statistics
| Year | Citizen Entries | Citizen Exits | Foreign Entries | Foreign Exits | Foreign Entry Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 29,706,888 | 29,575,501 | 19,584,714 | 19,460,183 | 39.7% |
| 2024 | 28,846,803 | 28,720,773 | 16,968,203 | 16,687,148 | 37.0% |
| 2023 | 22,667,305 | 22,756,008 | 11,500,883 | 11,197,461 | 33.7% |
| 2022 | 6,309,021 | 6,580,145 | 3,390,009 | 3,135,053 | 34.9% |
| 2021 | 1,197,820 | 1,234,697 | 1,044,545 | 1,082,631 | 46.6% |
| 2020 | 4,869,578 | 4,301,903 | 2,659,845 | 2,870,505 | 35.3% |
| 2019 | 28,889,626 | 28,905,763 | 17,880,503 | 17,872,201 | 38.2% |
| 2018 | 28,914,223 | 28,945,447 | 15,630,522 | 15,418,228 | 35.1% |
Data notes
- Based on original Ministry of Justice immigration statistics. 2018–2022 are direct values from the Public Data Portal CSV; 2023–2025 are derived by backing out the remaining fields (citizen entries, foreign exits) from figures published on the Ministry of Justice web page (citizen/foreign totals, citizen exits, foreign entries).
- This is a flow statistic — if one person crosses the border multiple times, each crossing is counted separately. It is not the same as the number of unique visitors.
- The Korea Tourism Organization's published "inbound foreign visitors" and "outbound Korean travelers" figures are based on this same Ministry of Justice raw data, but apply UN Tourism recommended exclusions/inclusions that differ slightly, so they may not exactly match the numbers shown here.
- 2026 is not yet included, since the year is still in progress. This page will be updated once the annual figures are finalized.
Public Data Portal — Ministry of Justice (immigration inspection) annual entry/exit statisticsPublic Data Portal — original CSV downloadMinistry of Justice — Korea Immigration ServiceKorea Tourism Organization Tourism Knowledge Information System — inbound tourism statisticsKorea Tourism Data Lab — outbound Korean travelers