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Destinations knownSouth Korea’s Jeju Island is damned if tourists do come, and damned if they don’t

Visitor numbers are almost back to pre-pandemic levels, but neither the locals nor the out-of-towners seem too happy about it

Arrivals complain that they find the island destination expensive, while inhabitants feel at increased risk of catching Covid-19

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The Songaksan Dullegil Trail, on Jeju Island, in South Korea. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 8:45am, 28 Apr 2021Updated: 8:45am, 28 Apr 2021

In 2018, overtourism was an Asia-wide affliction, with destinations from Boracay, in the Philippines, to Thailand’s Maya Bay engaging in damage control after too many visitors had descended. Heck, the term even made it onto the Oxford English Dictionary’s “word of the year” shortlist.

The South Korean island of Jeju also suffered from “too many tourists” that year, according to The Korea Times. Speaking to the English-language daily in 2018, Jeju resident Kang Won-bo lamented: “Jeju residents have to deal with the stress from many people and noise […] Many miss how it used to be.”

Fast forward to 2020 and along came Covid-19, interrupting international travel and transforming once-bustling hotspots into ghost towns haunted by their past popularity – or in the case of Jeju, returning it to those halcyon days of “how it used to be”, right? Wrong.

Located on one end of what is still the world’s busiest domestic flight route, which connects the island to the South Korean capital Seoul, Jeju has seen a surge in home-grown tourists that has compensated for a lack of international arrivals. According to South Korean news agency Yonhap, the island recorded 880,000 visitors in March, which represented 85 per cent of the pre-Covid-19 level of 1.03 million, in March 2019. However, neither the locals nor the out-of-towners seem too happy about it, if Korea Bizwire is to be believed.

“The provincial government of Jeju Island, South Korea’s most popular vacation destination, is facing a dilemma as tourists and residents both are showing higher negative perceptions towards Jeju’s tourism boom,” the news site reported on April 9. “Tourists are increasingly dissatisfied with the island’s expensive prices while Jeju residents are unhappy with the inconvenience caused by the influx of tourists despite the spread of coronavirus.”