earticle

영어

In 1992, the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Korea officially established Chinese-South Korean tourism ties. Chinese tourists account for the largest proportion of international inbound tourists to South Korea. Trends and changes in the tourism market were tracked by utilizing data on the number of mutual inbound tourists visiting South Korea and China each year. The most significant change occurred in 2016, when a political incident caused disruption to the tourism industry and, consequently, the South Korean tourism industry suffered economic losses. I consider this change a consequence of a shift in ‘political mutual trust’, which I define in this paper. The influence of this incident on the tourism industries of both countries is compared by utilizing the Tourism Background Curve Method (TBCM). TBCM is a method used to study the effects of factors that have acted as unexpected variables in tourism. Through this study, I would like to present the prospects for tourism exchange between South Korea and China, discuss measures for minimizing the negative impacts that exogenous events such as political incidences may have on the tourism industry, and offer suggestions for future research and attention.