Shim Woo-hyun
ANN/KOREA HERALD – Foreign travellers are returning to Myeong-dong, South Korea after over three years of economic decline due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the central Seoul shopping district seeing signs of recovery.
“Between last winter and now, I have been able to see a lot more foreigners in the Myeong-dong area, particularly on the main street. From morning until midnight, foreigners continue to flow into the area,” a 27-year-old part-time worker surnamed Kim told The Korea Herald in Myeong-dong, Seoul last Tuesday.
Behind the recently increased number of foreign travellers have been those from Japan and Southeast Asian countries, according to merchants operating businesses in the area.
“It is almost as busy as before the pandemic,” said a street vendor owner in the main commercial district of Myeong-dong Cho. Cho added, “I can see a greater number of travellers from Japan and Southeast Asian countries.”
“It feels like the number of Japanese travellers coming to this information centre almost doubled since last year,” said the head manager of the Myeong-dong Tourist Information Centre Lee Ji-young.
According to Korea Tourism Organisation data, the number of foreign travellers who visited South Korea in February this year reached 479,248 up from 99,999 in February last year.
This past February, the number of Japanese travellers stood at 94,393 people, accounting for 19.7 per cent of the total and taking up the largest portion.
In the past, the number of Chinese travellers always topped those of other countries.
“The number of foreign tourists who visit Myeong-dong has jumped after the government lifted strict travel restrictions last year. More Japanese people seemed to have visited after that as well,” said a tour guide from the Seoul Tourism Association, who was answering questions asked by foreign tourists on the street.
In September last year, the number of Japanese travellers remained at 27,560, accounting for 8.2 per cent of the total number of tourists who visited South Korea, 337,638.
But in the following month, after travel restrictions are lifted, the number of Japanese travellers jumped to 67,159, or 14.1 per cent of the 476,097 tourists who visited the country in October.
Amid hopes that Myeong-dong’s commercial district will continue to recover, the vacancy rate for commercial buildings nearby the main district has been also decreasing recently.
According to Korea Real Estate Board data, the vacancy rate for small-sized commercial buildings in Myeong-dong, during the fourth quarter last year, came down to 21.5 per cent, from 42.1 per cent in the first quarter of the same year.
The vacancy rate once hit a record high of 50.3 per cent in 2021 when the country’s tourism industry was crippled by the COVID-19 pandemic. The downward trend in rents for real estate properties in the Myeong-dong area has also slowed down.
The real estate board said rental prices for mid- and large-sized properties only went down by four per cent on-year in the fourth quarter of 2022, whereas they fell 30 per cent on-year in the same quarter in 2021.
“Rental fees dropped significantly during the pandemic, and it allowed large brands, like Adidas and ABC-Mart to open their flagship stores in Myeong-dong and replace large-sized cosmetic brand stores that were sitting on very large sites,” said the senior executive director of Cushman & Wakefield real estate services Dan Kim.
In February, Adidas reopened its biggest store in South Korea in the M Plaza building of the shopping district.
Japanese footwear company ABC-Mart, in particular, also opened its fourth Myeong-dong store last December, by combining a few properties into a bigger one.
“More brands are expected to try to open large-sized flagship stores by bringing small-sized stores together in the future,” Kim added.
