The Korea Times
The government is accelerating its efforts to reshape the country's tourism landscape, moving away from a long-standing administrative approach that has concentrated foreign visitor flows in the capital region. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said Tuesday it is holding a series of regional consultations this week. The meetings aim to lay the groundwork for a new tourism framework built around eight broad clusters, spanning five major hubs and three special autonomous regions across the country. The initiative comes as Korea grapples with a persistent structural imbalance, with more than 80 percent of foreign visitors never traveling beyond the Seoul metropolitan area. With the government targeting 23 million inbound tourists this year and 30 million by 2029, officials say the growth potential of a Seoul-centric model is reaching its limit. "Tourists do not travel along administrative boundaries," said Kang Jung-won, head of the tourism policy bureau of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. "That is precisely why we must expand beyond the single administrative unit mod
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