Korea welcomed 12.8 million foreign tourists in the first seven months of 2026, a 21.3 percent increase from 10.56 million during the same period last year, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said Monday. Japanese travelers were a key driver. Through July, 28 percent of all Japanese people who traveled abroad chose Korea as their destination, the highest share on record and up 3.5 percentage points from a year earlier and outpacing the United States, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam as a destination for outbound travel. The number of Japanese visitors to Korea reached 2.28 million, up 18.8 percent, even as overall Japanese outbound travel grew at a more modest 4.1 percent to 8.14 million. Foreign tourist spending on credit and debit cards totaled 12.09 trillion won ($8.8 billion) through July, up 48.3 percent from 8.15 trillion won a year earlier. Officials attributed the Japanese travel boom partly to airlines shifting long-haul capacity to short-haul routes such as Korea amid high fuel costs, which pushed weekly Korea-Japan flight seats to 349,000, up 2.4 percent from the end of 20