South Korea drew a record number of foreign visitors in 2025 and still ran one of its widest tourism deficits, Maeil Business Newspaper reported, citing an analysis by Yanolja Research titled “2025 Analysis of Korea’s Inbound and Outbound Tourism Performance”. The country welcomed 18.937 million foreign visitors last year, above pre-pandemic levels. Its tourism balance still recorded a deficit of $10.76 billion, about 15 trillion won. The paper said the shortfall marked the third consecutive year the deficit had exceeded $10 billion, a pattern that has held even as arrival numbers climbed.
Total tourism income reached $21.89 billion in 2025, roughly 31 trillion won, up 5.5 per cent on 2019, according to Yanolja Research. That gain did not carry through to spend per visitor. Per capita expenditure fell to about 1.62 million won, below the 1.66 million won recorded in 2019, Yanolja Research said. More people were choosing Korea, and each was spending less. That gap, between volume and return, is the deficit in miniature.
Where the value went
Yanolja Research traced much of the decline to the erosion of duty-free. Duty-free sales fell from about 25 trillion won in 2019 to about 9 trillion won in 2025, the report said, reflecting both fewer foreign shoppers and lower spending by each. The report framed the change as a move away from volume shopping toward fewer, higher-value purchases, a shift the duty-free trade has not survived intact. Cruise arrivals, which grew more than fivefold on 2019, pulled the average down further. Maeil Business Newspaper reported that cruise passengers stay for shorter periods and spend less on the ground. Their headcount rose; their per capita contribution did not.
Medical tourism as the high-value segment
Against that backdrop, medical tourism stood out. Consumption tied to medical tourism rose 5.3 times on 2019, reaching 2.796 trillion won, Maeil Business Newspaper reported. Yanolja Research described this kind of “local high-end experience consumption” as a partial offset to the weak duty-free trade. The lesson is structural: the return on inbound tourism is set by spend per patient, not by arrivals, and medical tourism sits at the paying end of that scale. Korea’s problem was never volume; it was value, and medical tourism is the segment built to supply it.
The same pattern shows up in separate figures on Korea’s medical tourism consumption, which have climbed with cosmetic and dermatology demand, and in the record foreign patient arrivals reported elsewhere. Both point the same way. They point towards a segment that earns more per head than the shopping trade it is quietly replacing.
The outbound surge
The deficit had a second driver, on the outbound side. A record 29.55 million Koreans travelled abroad in 2025, Maeil Business Newspaper reported, with much of the demand aimed at nearby Japan. Korean arrivals to Japan reached 9.46 million, up 69.4 per cent on 2019. Longer routes recovered more slowly: travel to the United States fell 28.3 per cent, and travel to the Philippines fell 32.3 per cent, against the same baseline. Average spending per outbound traveller rose to about 1.55 million won, from 1.43 million won in 2019, and total outbound expenditure came to roughly 46 trillion won. Koreans abroad were spending more per head than foreign visitors were spending inside Korea. That spread is the deficit.
What to watch
One near-term variable could work in Korea’s favour. A diplomatic dispute between China and Japan that began in November prompted Chinese travel curbs on Japan, and the number of Chinese tourists visiting Japan fell 45.3 per cent year on year in December, Maeil Business Newspaper reported. In the same month, Chinese arrivals to Korea overtook those to Japan. Hong Seok-won, a senior researcher at Yanolja Research, said the shift was likely to “become more pronounced in the first quarter of 2026”, particularly over the Lunar New Year holiday. The paper noted that departures from Incheon International Airport hit an all-time high over that period. The outbound pull remains strong.
Whether that redirected Chinese demand converts into higher-spending medical tourism, rather than another wave of short-stay shopping, is the test worth watching. The figures to check are narrow and dated: spend per foreign visitor against the 1.62 million won of 2025, medical tourism consumption against the 2.796 trillion won already logged, and whether the tourism deficit falls below $10 billion for the first time in four years.
