While 825,800 South Koreans Became Japan's Largest Visitors, Hong Kong Tourists Stayed Away Over "Major Disaster" Rumors

South Koreans Top the List of Foreign Visitors to Japan
825,800 Visited in May
Hong Kong Visitors Decreased by 11.2%

The Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) announced on June 18 that South Koreans were the largest group of foreign visitors to Japan last month.

The number of foreign visitors to Japan last month was 3,693,300, with South Koreans accounting for 825,800, ranking first by country and region for the first time in two months. They were followed by 789,900 visitors from China, 538,400 from Taiwan, and 311,900 from the United States. In terms of cumulative visitors by country and region this year, South Koreans also ranked first with 4,053,600.

View of Kabukicho, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. Photo by Yonhap News

JNTO analyzed that the record number of South Korean visitors in May was due to factors such as the launch of new flight routes connecting Cheongju, Ibaraki, and Obihiro.

However, in the case of visitors from Hong Kong, the number of people who visited Japan last month was 193,100, which was an 11.2% decrease compared to the previous year. Among major countries and regions, Hong Kong was the only one to see a year-on-year decline in visitors.

Nihon Keizai Shimbun analyzed that this was likely due to the spread of unfounded rumors about a major disaster occurring in Japan, leading more people to refrain from traveling to the country.

In Hong Kong, it is known that rumors predicting a major disaster in Japan this summer, based on the so-called earthquake predictions of a Japanese manga artist, have spread through social networking services (SNS) and other channels.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.