Jeju Expected to Welcome Over 1 Million International Cruise Tourists Again

There is growing optimism that the number of international cruise tourists visiting Jeju will surpass 1 million once more. According to the Jeju Special Self-Governing Province's announcement on December 9, 2024, a total of 34 international cruise ships are scheduled to make 344 visits to Jeju in 2025. Jeju Port will host 166 of these visits, while Seogwipo Gangjeong Port will accommodate 178.

To ensure efficient operations at the cruise ports, the province has designated that cruise ships weighing over 100,000 tons will dock at the Jeju Military-Civilian Complex Tourism Port (Gangjeong Port), while those under 100,000 tons will continue to use the existing Jeju Port.

The number of cruise ship arrivals in Jeju peaked in 2016, with 507 visits bringing in 1,209,106 tourists, following 242 visits in 2014 with 590,400 tourists and 285 visits in 2015 with 622,068 tourists. However, the situation changed dramatically in March 2017 when the Chinese government imposed a ban on group tours to South Korea in response to the THAAD missile defense system, leading to a sharp decline to just 98 visits and 189,732 tourists that year. The following year saw a further drop to only 20 visits and 21,703 tourists.

In 2019, there was a slight recovery with 29 visits and 44,266 tourists, but the COVID-19 pandemic halted all cruise arrivals from 2020 to 2022. With the end of the pandemic and the resumption of group tours from China, Jeju saw a significant increase in cruise arrivals last year, with 71 visits bringing in 100,661 tourists.

As of late November this year, Jeju welcomed 260 cruise visits (130 at Jeju Port and 130 at Gangjeong Port), totaling 622,958 tourists, including 484,409 from China and 53,668 from Japan.

A representative from Jeju Province stated, "If the number of international cruise ship arrivals reaches 344 next year, we expect the number of tourists to exceed 1 million. It seems that the era of over 1 million international cruise tourists will return for the first time in nine years since 2016."