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| The giant cruise ship Majestic Princess arrives at a port in Jeju Island with over 4,000 passengers in this picture taken May 15, 2019. Cruise ships were not granted permission to enter Korea in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Newsis |
By Lee Hae-rin
Cruise tourism will return to Jeju Island next year after a two-year hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, as more than 30 ships from Japan are scheduled to visit the southern resort island.
According to the Jeju Tourism Organization (JTO), it won a joint bid with the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries to receive 32 tour cruises departing from Japan next year. The JTO forecasts that the number of passengers will reach 55,000.
The first ship set to arrive at a port in Jeju is a giant Princess Cruise ship with 3,400 passengers on March 19. It will make 14 more trips to the island over the course of the year.
Starting May 5, an MSC Cruises ship with up to 4,000 passengers will arrive at the island and make a total of 11 more journeys to the island by the end of next year.
Regent Seven Seas Cruises' six-star luxury cruise ship with 800 passengers onboard will dock in Jeju on March 21. Other cruise ships of Holland America, Swan Hellenic, and other cruises from Australia and Germany will visit the island too.
The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries announced on Oct. 19 that it will allow foreign travelers to disembark from ships arriving on Jeju Island.
Cruise tourism to Jeju Island peaked in 2016 with over 1.2 million passengers. However, the number dropped to 21,700 in 2018 due to Korea-China tensions escalated by the deployment of a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system the year before. At the time, over 90 percent of arriving cruise ship tourists were from China.
In February 2020, the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters (CDSCH) banned cruise ships from entering ports of Korea and foreign travelers from coming ashore in order to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. No cruise ships entered the country in 2020 and 2021.
This May, in response to the economic difficulties within the tourism industry, the oceans ministry allowed cruises under the condition that no passengers disembark from docked ships.
All passengers are required to wear masks indoors and provide personal health information via a Q-code system, and a digital platform will be used to pre-register their quarantine information before entry into Korea.
Foreign travelers who are infected with the coronavirus or show associated symptoms will not be allowed to disembark from their vessel.
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