South Korea’s Jeju Island – a foreigner-only casino hub – saw a 21.5 percent year-on-year growth in overseas tourist volume for the first five months of this year, to just under 1 million. The Chinese mainland continued to be the leading source market for foreign arrivals.
That is according to the latest available statistics from Jeju Tourism Organization, a public company responsible for promoting travel to the semi-autonomous island.
Jeju is home to eight foreigner-only casino licences, although some venues have periodically been inactive.
In May, Jeju welcomed nearly 1.21 million tourists, with circa 80.0 percent – or 963,994 – being domestic visitors.
While the volume of domestic arrivals declined 7.1 percent year-on-year in May, the number of foreign tourists grew 12.6 percent to 241,555, the tourism body’s data show.
The May figures took Jeju’s aggregate tourist tally for first five months to approximately 5.64 million, up 9.8 percent year-on-year.
Growth was seen in the domestic and foreign cohorts. For January to end-May, the domestic-tourist tally rose 7.7 percent year-on-year to nearly 4.69 million. The foreign-tourist aggregate grew 21.5 percent to 955,748.
The Chinese mainland was the top foreign source market for the five months, as it was for the same period last year.
This time it supplied 613,112 arrivals, or 64.2 percent of total foreign tourist volume. The tally of Chinese-mainland visitors rose 3.9 percent year-on-year.
The next-biggest foreigner markets for the five months to May 31, were Taiwan, with 134,760; and Japan a distant third, with 41,861.
Nonetheless the aggregate from Taiwan rose 102.2 percent from a year ago, while that from Japan was up 99.3 percent.
Jeju has a visa-free entry policy applicable to visitors from the Chinese mainland and a number of other regional source markets.
The island’s casino industry collectively reported a record of approximately KRW646.50-billion (US$429.5-million currently), in gross gaming revenue for 2025, up circa 40.8-percent from 2024, as tourism and gambling business continued to grow in the post-pandemic period.
