Nearly six and a half million foreign tourists visited South Korea between January and September this year.

According to monthly statistics from the justice ministry’s Korea Immigration Service on Saturday, six-point-49 million visitors entered the country on tourist transit, or B-2, visas during the first nine months of 2025, up 17-point-six percent from a year earlier.

Foreign arrivals topped the 500-thousand mark every month since January, when just over 510-thousand people entered.

During the peak travel season from July through September, monthly arrivals exceeded 800-thousand for three straight months for the first time since records began.

The number of inbound tourists had hit an all-time high of seven-point-15 million in 2019 before plunging to 939-thousand in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic and bottoming out at 115-thousand in 2021.

The figure rebounded to 945-thousand in 2022 and surged to five-point-12 million in 2023, reaching a record seven-point-55 million last year.

Considering the 2025 total reached 86 percent of last year’s figure in just nine months, officials say a new annual record is within reach.