South Korean Arrivals to Vietnam on Rise

11:31:45 AM | 6/27/2007

South Korea is now emerging as one of four biggest markets of Vietnam tourism with average yearly increase of around 20 per cent, according to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT).

Most of the tourists arrive in the country for doing businesses and holiday. Others come for other purposes.

In 2006 alone, Vietnam received 400,000 Korean tourists, or 1/10 of the total number of foreign travelers coming to the communist country, statistics from VNAT showed.

The proportion has reached 1/8 in recent months. Especially, South Korea many times left China behind to become the largest market of Vietnam in first months of 2007.

The surge is due to the closer cooperation between the governments and companies in the field and the bilateral visa exemption agreement.

VNAT forecast that the number of Korean tourists to Vietnam will continue increasing in months to come.

In the first five months of this year, Vietnam welcomed as many as 223,200 tourist arrivals from South Korea. In May alone, more than 304,840 foreign tourists visited the communist country. China, South Korea, the US and Japan are also the biggest markets of the country in the month.

Vietnam targets to host as many as 20.9 million tourists this year. Of them, 3.9 million are predicted be foreign arrivals, with the remaining 17 million being domestic vacationers, an on-year increase of 14 per cent and 6.3 per cent respectively. (Youth)