An increasing number of Chinese visitors are coming to Korea these days on the strongly winding “Korean wave” in China, a term used to  describe the growing interest in Korean pop culture, according to a Korea tourism promotion agency. The Korea National Tourism Organization revealed that Chinese tourists to Korea in the first quarter of 2004 numbered over 338,000, up 34 percent from the same period last year.

The number of tourists from Taiwan shot up by 74.4 percent do 86,000, making Taiwanese the fourth-largest group of visitors to South Korea after Japanese, Chinese and Americans.