Japanese travelers are squeezing shopping trips, food excursions and beauty treatments into short, frequent visits to Seoul. They stayed for an average of 3.5 days last year.
Pedestrians carry shopping bags along a street in Myeongdong in Jung District, central Seoul, on Sept. 28.NEWS1
Japanese tourists are squeezing shopping trips, food excursions and beauty treatments into short, frequent visits to Seoul — a travel style known as “bullet traveling.”
Japanese travelers stayed in Seoul for an average of 3.5 days last year, according to a Seoul Tourism Organization survey cited by the Seoul Metropolitan Government on Tuesday. The figure is shorter than the 5.9 days for Chinese visitors and 6 days for Taiwanese visitors. But 71 percent of Japanese tourists had been to Seoul before compared to 56 percent of Chinese travelers and 59 percent of Taiwanese travelers.
The city attributes the trend to Korea’s proximity to Japan and to neighborhoods such as Myeongdong and Dongdaemun in central Seoul, where visitors can find everything that they want to experience or buy in a small area.
Young women accounted for a large share of Japanese tourists. Of the 3.65 million who traveled to Korea last year, 68 percent were women, and 34 percent were women in their 20s and 30s.
Rather than sightseeing, these visitors tend to focus on experiences.
Medical and wellness services accounted for 48 percent of Japanese tourists’ spending activities in Seoul in the first half of this year, an analysis by the city’s big data platform showed. The category covers beauty, health and skin care. Shopping followed at 24.3 percent, then dining at 17.7 percent and lodging at 9.2 percent.
Reviews of packed Seoul itineraries are also appearing on Japanese travel forums.
“One tourist spent two days and one night [in the country]. They looked around Gwangjang Market and Changsin-dong [in central Seoul], then shopped and ate dinner in Dongdaemun [on their first day],” a Seoul city official said. “The next day, they got a body scrub at a one-person scrub shop at 6 a.m., had semipermanent eyebrow makeup done in Myeongdong and flew out at 2 p.m.”
Tourists look at their phones in front of a store in Myeongdong in Jung District, central Seoul, on Sept. 28.NEWS1
Online searches reflect this trend. Search interest in Japan for “Seoul one-person body scrub” has risen about 1,050 percent from five years ago, according to Google Trends. Interest in “Myeongdong eyebrow tattoos” and “Dongdaemun shopping” has risen about 650 percent.
The city plans to channel the demand into its nighttime economy. It will create tourist routes in popular areas such as Myeongdong and Dongdaemun that link late-night shopping and dining with early-morning experiences the next day. In November, it will run the “Seoul Night Super Pass” program, a promotion offering discounts on shopping, dining and cultural experiences at major tourist hubs at night.
“We will expand tourism content into late-night and early-morning hours and provide information that fits the travel patterns of short-term visitors,” Jo Seong-ho, the director general of the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s Tourism & Sports Bureau, said.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
