SEOUL – Foreign travellers are returning to South Korea’s Myeong-dong after over three years of economic decline due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with the central Seoul shopping district seeing signs of recovery.
“Between last winter and now, I have been able to see a lot more foreigners in the Myeong-dong area, particularly on the main street. From morning until midnight, foreigners continue to flow into the area,” a 27-year-old part-time worker surnamed Kim told The Korea Herald in Myeong-dong, Seoul.
Behind the recently increased number of foreign travellers have been those from Japan and South-east Asian countries, according to merchants operating businesses in the area.
“It is almost as busy as before the pandemic,” said Mr Cho, a street vendor owner in the main commercial district of Myeong-dong.
He added: “I can see a greater number of travellers from Japan and South-east Asian countries.”
Said Mr Lee Ji-young, the head manager of the Myeong-dong Tourist Information Centre: “It feels like the number of Japanese travellers coming to this information centre almost doubled since 2022.”
According to Korea Tourism Organisation data, the number of foreign travellers who visited South Korea in February this year reached 479,248, up from 99,999 in February 2022.
This past February, the number of Japanese travellers stood at 94,393, accounting for 19.7 per cent of the total and taking up the largest portion.
In the past, the number of Chinese travellers always topped those of other countries.
“The number of foreign tourists who visit Myeong-dong has jumped after the government lifted strict travel restrictions in 2022. More Japanese people seemed to have visited after that as well,” said a tour guide from the Seoul Tourism Association, who was answering questions from foreign tourists on the street.
In September 2022, the number of Japanese travellers remained at 27,560, accounting for 8.2 per cent of the total number of tourists who visited South Korea, 337,638.
But in the following month, after travel restrictions were lifted, the number of Japanese travellers jumped to 67,159, or 14.1 per cent of the 476,097 tourists who visited the country in October 2022.
Amid hopes that Myeong-dong’s commercial district will continue to recover, the vacancy rate for commercial buildings near the main district has also been decreasing recently.
According to Korea Real Estate Board data, the vacancy rate for small-sized commercial buildings in Myeong-dong during the fourth quarter of 2022 came down to 21.5 per cent, from 42.1 per cent in the first quarter of the same year.
The vacancy rate once hit a record high of 50.3 per cent in 2021 when the country’s tourism industry was crippled by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The downward trend in rents for real estate properties in the Myeong-dong area has also slowed down.
The real estate board said that rental prices for mid- and large-sized properties went down by only 4 per cent year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2022, whereas they fell 30 per cent year-on-year in the same quarter in 2021.
A licensed real estate agent in Myeong-dong also said: “There has been an increasing number of people who ask if there are any offices available. But many of them have been already leased and are under construction for shop openings.”
Mr Dan Kim, senior executive director of Cushman & Wakefield real estate services, said: “Rental fees dropped significantly during the pandemic, and it allowed large brands – like Adidas and ABC-Mart – to open their flagship stores in Myeong-dong and replace large-sized cosmetic brand stores that were sitting on very large sites.”
In February, Adidas reopened its biggest store in South Korea in the M Plaza building of the shopping district. Japanese footwear company ABC-Mart, in particular, also opened its fourth Myeong-dong store in December 2022, by combining a few properties into a bigger one.
“More brands are expected to try to open large-sized flagship stores by bringing small-sized stores together in the future,” Mr Kim added.
Myeong-dong is expected to make a full recovery to pre-pandemic tourist numbers when more Chinese tourists come back.
In February 2019, the number of travellers visiting South Korea came to 1,201,802, and 481,681 were from China, according to Korea Tourism Data.
But in February this year, the number of Chinese tourists came to merely 45,884, or 9.6 per cent of all the foreign travellers who visited the country.
The Seoul Tourism Association agent said that the number of Chinese travellers has shown no dramatic increase yet, despite the fact that there have been some marginal increases in the number of travellers from Taiwan and Hong Kong.
One of the main reasons for the slow recovery of Chinese travellers is a diplomatic dispute between South Korea and China.
In January this year, China stopped issuing short-term visas, after Seoul’s decision to strengthen Covid-19 curbs on Chinese travellers.
South Korea has also been excluded from China’s recent list of overseas group tour destinations, which included 60 countries.
Source: straitstimes
