Chinese tourists have been central to the development of South Korea's tourism industry. A record eight million Chinese tourists went to South Korea in 2016, accounting for more than half of all foreign holidaymakers.
The figure have beat the previous record of six million, which had been set the year before. In 2015, Chinese tourists spent 229 billion US dollars around the world. Chinese tourists' money accounted for more than 70 percent of all the revenue made by duty-free stores run by Lotte, a South Korean conglomerate, in 2016.
Official data also show people from China spent 500 million US dollars buying South Korean goods online, up by 75 percent year-on-year.
