Air traffic volume in South Korea halved in 2020 from a year earlier due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on Sunday, the number of flight operations last year came to 421-thousand, down 50 percent from 2019.

The volume on international flights plunged 66-point-four percent to 200-thousand, while flights on domestic routes fell ten-point-four percent to 221-thousand.

The Seoul-Jeju route was the busiest with 164-thousand flights, down 47-point-five percent from the previous year.

The country's air traffic had been steadily increasing from 739-thousand flights in 2016 to 842-thousand in 2019.

But it began to plunge in March last year after the nation was hit by the pandemic, with the monthly number of flights falling to around 30-thousand since.