SEOUL, Jan. 21 (Yonhap) — Visitors from the Middle East spent the largest amount of money on medical treatment per person in South Korea last year, with those from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) topping the list, the state-run Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) said Wednesday.
Visitors from the UAE spent an average of 17.7 million won (US$16,271) on medical services here last year, becoming the biggest individual spenders among others, the KTO said. Medical tourists from Kazakhstan and Indonesia spent 4.56 million won and 1.93 million won, respectively, it said.
Chinese tourists, many of who come to Seoul for plastic surgery, spent an average of 1.81 million won.
Although individual-level medical expenditure was big, the total number of visitors from the Middle East fell far below those neighboring Asian nations.
Among 12.17 million tourists to South Korea in 2013, 5.13 percent were estimated to have been from Muslim-majority nations, the KTO said.
Visitors from Indonesia and Malaysia, the two largest Muslim nations in Southeast Asia, increased 16.6 percent and 26.8 percent each in 2014 from a year ago, largely due to the popularity of Korean pop culture and cheaper flight tickets offered by budget airlines.
The Korean tourism agency last month published a food guidebook for Muslim tourists visiting Korea for their conveniences as they eat halal meat, which are slaughtered properly in the Islamic way, and do not eat pork.
It also plans to publish a guidebook in March for local tour agents and officials in the tourism industry to help them provide customized services for Muslim tourists.
"The number of Muslim tourists to South Korea remains far below those from China and Japan," the KTO said. "We should pay more attention to the fact that a majority of VIP tourists who spend big are from Muslim-majority nations." (Yonhap)
