Where Foreign Tourists Actually Spend in Korea — 5 Myths Verified by Spending Data (2026)

What Do Foreign Tourists Spend On in Korea?

Shopping and medical care. Everything else is a distant third.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government tracked ₩5.6172 trillion in foreign card spending during the first half of 2026. Break it down by sector and the picture is stark.

📊 Foreign Card Spending in Seoul by Sector, H1 2026 (Seoul Metropolitan Government)

Shopping and medical care add up to 70.8%. Seven out of every ten foreign-tourist transactions in Seoul involve buying products or getting a procedure done.

Korea Is the Outlier — the Country Where Medical Care Is #1

The Korea Culture & Tourism Institute’s KCTI Data Focus Issue No. 3, published in July 2026, ran a fascinating natural experiment. It used VISA card transaction data to compare how Japanese, Singaporean, Vietnamese, and Thai tourists spent money across six different destination countries. Same travelers, different countries — so the differences reveal each destination’s character, not the travelers’.

🌏 Same Asian Tourists, Top Spending Category by Destination (VISA Card Data, 2024–2025)

South Korea was the only country among the six where medical care ranked first. The spending breakdown in Korea: medical 20.1% · premium shopping 18.3% · everyday shopping 13.0% · restaurants 12.2%.

The picture sharpens when you split by nationality. Japanese visitors spent 22.3% of their Korea budget on medical care. Thailand (18.2%) and Singapore (17.2%) followed. Vietnam was lower at 7.6% — but even that 7.6% was several times the medical share those same Vietnamese travelers spent in any other country (0.4–2.9%).

Is It True That "Japanese Go to Seongsu, Chinese Go to Myeongdong"?

Half right, half wrong — and the answer depends on which data you’re looking at.

Chinese tourists in Myeongdong is solid. In H1 2025, Chinese visitors rang up ₩41.1 billion in card payments across Myeongdong 1-ga, Myeongdong 2-ga, and Chungmuro 1-ga — up 90.2% from ₩21.6 billion a year earlier. That’s a meaningful chunk of the broader Myeongdong commercial district’s ₩287.9 billion total (Myeongdong 1-ga + 2-ga combined).

Japanese tourists in Seongsu is murkier. Two data sources tell different stories.

🔍 Whose Neighborhood Is Seongsu? Different Answers from Different Data

These two don’t contradict each other — they measure different things. Who visits most (foot traffic) and who spends most (card data) are different questions. Seongsu draws a high share of North American foot traffic, but Japanese tourists appear more likely to actually open their wallets inside the neighborhood’s curated shops.

A Spending Map by Nationality — Where Each Group Scatters

Layer multiple big-data sources together and distinct national profiles emerge.

🗺️ Spending and Visit Patterns by Nationality (2025–2026 Data)

The Taiwan-Busan axis in particular is an underappreciated storyline. According to the L.POINT consumer report published by Lotte Members in July 2026, Taiwanese customers accounted for more than half of foreign shoppers at Lotte Department Store and Lotte Mart in Busan. Their spending on snacks, instant noodles, and dried seaweed products was markedly higher than that of foreign tourists in Seoul.

Tourists Go North, Spending Goes South — Why the Split?

Line up visitor foot traffic and card spending side by side and an odd mismatch jumps out.

📊 Top Districts: Foreign Tourist Visits vs. Card Spending, H1 2025

Not a single Gangnam neighborhood appears in the top 10 for visitor traffic. Yet four of the top 10 spending districts are in Gangnam. The Seoul Metropolitan Government’s H1 2026 data confirms the pattern: Gangnam-gu leads with 29.3% of all foreign card spending, followed by Jung-gu at 28.4% and Mapo-gu at 7.3%.

What drives the gap? Medical shopping. Medical service sales in Gangnam commercial districts jumped from ₩17.9 billion in H1 2024 to ₩27.8 billion in H1 2025. Seocho: ₩8.6B → ₩15.0B. Apgujeong-Cheongdam: ₩5.3B → ₩9.4B. In every case, medical services posted the highest growth rate among all sectors in the district.

What's Changing Fastest in 2026?

The Korea Tourism Organization’s Data Lab card-spending analysis for May 2026 captures the shifting landscape in a single month. Foreign card spending hit ₩2.1222 trillion — the first time the monthly figure has ever crossed the ₩2 trillion mark — up 67.1% year on year, the fastest growth rate since 2023.

📈 Sector Growth Rates, May 2026 (YoY, Korea Tourism Organization Data Lab)

The most distinctively Korean finding here is pharmacies. The same pattern appeared in the premium pharmacy clusters around Seongsu 2-ga 1-dong and Seongsu 2-ga 3-dong and in Haeundae-gu’s U1-dong in Busan: get a dermatology procedure, then stop at a pharmacy to buy over-the-counter regenerative creams before heading home. Procedure and purchase have fused into a single consumption loop.

Is the Duty-Free Era Over? Where the Spending Moved

The old model — group tourists buying in bulk at duty-free shops — is clearly fading. Spending has flowed in two directions.

First, into everyday Korean retail spaces. CJ Olive Young reported that the number of foreign shoppers visiting during its annual sale period has grown 11-fold over three years. Foreign visitors who time their trips to coincide with Olive Young sales and return at least twice a year have doubled annually since 2023. At GS25 convenience stores, foreign card sales rose 60.2% in the first half of the year — top sellers included Banana Milk, Greek yogurt cups, Gamdongran (seasoned soft-boiled eggs), Chamkkae Ramyun (sesame instant noodles), Buldak Bokkeummyeon (spicy chicken noodles), and Honey Butter Almond snacks. These aren’t tourist souvenirs. They’re what Koreans buy in their daily lives.

Second, beyond Seoul. GS25 stores in coastal tourist destinations — Gangneung, Sokcho, Haeundae, Jeju, about 100 locations in total — saw foreign card sales jump 136.9% year on year. At ABC Mart, foreign-tourist sales grew 40% overall in H1 2026, but regional stores pulled the average up: Konkuk University area +50%, Daegu +58%, Ulsan +78%. ABC Mart’s foreign sales by nationality rank: China > Taiwan > Japan > Singapore > Philippines.

So How Many Myths Held Up?

Here’s the scorecard for the five assumptions we tested.

✅ Myth vs. Data

Translate the numbers into the traveler’s eye and a portrait emerges. The average day for a foreign visitor in Korea right now looks something like this: walk around in the north, get a procedure in the south, then stock up at Olive Young and the convenience store. The image of tourists emerging from Myeongdong clutching duty-free shopping bags — that’s already a vintage photograph in the data.