Korean retail targets Taiwanese tourists as visitors up almost 30% on year

Korea's retail industry is shifting its focus to Taiwanese tourists, drawn by their strong purchasing power and enthusiasm for K-culture, as the sector looks beyond Chinese visitors it had aggressively courted since visa-free entry was introduced last year.

At Lotte Department Store's Busan main branch, Taiwanese customers accounted for 45 percent of all foreign sales in the first quarter of this year, up from 35 percent in 2024. Taiwan also ranked as the top foreign sales contributor across all four of its Busan stores last year. "Taiwanese customers are among the most enthusiastic and responsive to K-culture," a Lotte representative said. "They spend a long time in store and show strong engagement with shopping."

Shinsegae Department Store reported even sharper gains. Taiwanese customers' spending in the luxury category surged 16-fold year-on-year in the first quarter. At Shinsegae's Busan Centum City and Daejeon Art & Science branches, Taiwanese sales jumped 139 percent and 367 percent, respectively, in 2024.

The retail boom reflects a broader surge in Taiwanese visitors. Approximately 1.89 million Taiwanese tourists visited Korea last year, up 28 percent from 1.47 million the year before, according to the Korea Tourism Organization and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. In the first quarter of this year alone, around 540,000 Taiwanese arrived, the highest growth rate among major source countries at 37.7 percent.

Experts point to a combination of factors driving the trend. "Rising oil prices have dampened demand for long-haul travel to places like Europe, while the spread of K-content has brought more young individual travelers from Taiwan to Korea," said Kim Nam-jo, a professor of tourism at Hanyang University. 

"Taiwanese tourists spend less per person than Chinese tourists, but they show a stronger preference for experiential spending at malls and department stores, making them a very clear target consumer group," said Hanyang University's tourism professor Jeong Ran-soo.

Retailers are rolling out tailored strategies to capture this market. Lotte and Shinsegae department stores, along with convenience store chains EMart24 and 7-Eleven, have introduced Line Pay, Taiwan's most widely used mobile payment platform.

Hyundai Department Store Group is taking its pitch directly to Taiwan. The company is running a pop-up store under its overseas retail platform "The Hyundai Global" at Shin Kong Mitsukoshi department store in Taichung through July 26, building on a K-brand pop-up held in Taipei's Xinyi District last October. 

"Taiwanese tourists ranked second among foreign visitors to The Hyundai Seoul in the first quarter, after Chinese visitors," said Yang Myeong-seong, a managing director at Hyundai Department Store. "Given how attuned Taiwanese tourists are to K-trends, we are rolling out K-beauty experience pop-ups and other content at our stores with high foreign sales."

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.

BY NOH YU-RIM [lee.jian@joongang.co.kr]