Methodology — The Visitors Index

Source: Korea Tourism Statistics (arrivals by nationality) (출입국관광통계), 국가승인통계 제314004호 — compiled by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism · Korea Tourism Organization, built on immigration records from the Ministry of Justice. Published monthly on the Korea Tourism Data Lab. License: KOGL Type 1 (공공누리 제1유형 — 출처표시). Retrieved 2026-08-29.
How the ranking works: There is no formula. Nationalities are sorted by 2025 arrivals. The growth figure is the change against 2024, computed from the same table. Continental subtotals, overseas-Korean rows and sub-breakdowns in the source sheet are excluded so no visitor is counted twice.
Update cadence: The source publishes monthly with a one-to-two-month lag. We refresh when a full year closes, and label the data year on the index page.

Limits worth knowing before you cite this

Arrivals are not people. One frequent business traveller from Tokyo counts every trip. High-frequency short-haul markets (Japan, China, Taiwan) are boosted by this relative to long-haul ones.
Arrivals are not all tourists. The statistic counts foreign entrants — students, workers and business visitors included. The source separates purposes only partially, so we rank the total.
Nationality is passport, not residence. A Korean-American on a US passport counts as United States; the sheet’s overseas-Korean rows are excluded from this ranking.