KOREAN NET

Suncheonman Bay National Garden and Suncheonman Wetland in Suncheon, Jeollanam-do Province, had the most number of visitors among tourist attractions in the nation. Shown are tulips at the garden in April last year. (Garden's official Facebook page)

By Lee Kyoung Mi

The country's most visited tourist attractions last year were Suncheonman Bay National Garden and Suncheonman Wetland.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Korea Culture and Tourism Institute on June 9 said their jointly run database Tourism Knowledge and Information System, which counted the number of visitors to 2,752 leading travel destinations nationwide, found that the garden and wetland had the highest number of visitors last year at 7,781,426.

Placing ninth in 2022 with 2.67 million, the venue saw its figure rise about 5.1 million in a year largely thanks to the annual Suncheonman Bay International Garden Expo, which ran last year from April to October. The many visitors to the event helped promote the country's beautiful garden culture to the world.

Second on the list was the theme park Everland in Yongin, Gyeonggi-do Province, with 5,881,640 and third the Korea International Exhibition Center, aka KINTEX, in Goyang, Gyeonggi-do, with 5,840,252. Rounding out the top five were Gyeongbokgung Palace (5,579,905), the indoor theme park Lotte World (5,192,688) and National Museum of Korea (4,179,508) all in Seoul.

km137426@korea.kr