Although the number of foreign tourists visiting Busan exceeded 2.42 million in the first half of this year, leading to a significant surge in tourism and spending, travelers on the ground have voiced considerable dissatisfaction with basic convenience facilities such as trash cans and restrooms.

The Busan Metropolitan City government conducted in-depth interviews with foreign tourists who visited major tourist destinations, including Haeundae and Gamcheon Culture Village, for three days starting August 22.

The most frequently cited issue was the lack of basic tourism convenience facilities.

Twenty-five percent of respondents reported experiencing inconveniences due to a shortage of public trash cans or unclean public restrooms.

Transportation-related inconveniences followed at 18.8%.

Difficulties in recharging transportation cards and a lack of promotion for subway multi-use passes were pointed out.

Inconveniences related to guidance, such as multilingual route maps and map translations, and payment issues, such as the non-acceptance of credit cards, each stood at 12.5%.

Responses citing the requirement of Korean phone numbers or alien registration cards, or complicated reservation procedures, accounted for 9.4%.

By nationality, tourists from Greater China requested multilingual signs for taxi reservations and vacant taxi indicators, an expansion of places accepting WeChat Pay and Alipay, and improvements to public bicycle authentication procedures.

Japanese tourists pointed out the cleanliness of public restrooms, cigarette butts around restaurants, and sewage odors in the Seomyeon area.

European and American tourists cited the difficulty of finding sufficient Busan tourism information on Google Maps as a major inconvenience.

Foreign visitors to Busan are increasing rapidly.

According to data released by Busan City on August 30, the number of foreign tourists who visited Busan in the first half of this year reached 2,420,629, a 44% increase compared to the same period last year.

By country, Taiwan led with 477,606 visitors, followed by China with 468,876, Japan with 291,141, and the United States with 219,147.

Notably, Chinese tourists surged by 90.7% and Taiwanese tourists by 54.0% compared to the same period last year.

The spending amount of foreign tourists visiting Busan in the first half of this year recorded 591.4 billion won, a 63.0% increase from 362.1 billion won during the same period last year.

(Reported by Kim Jiuk | Video by Choi Gang-san | Graphics by Lee Jung-joo | Produced by SBS Digital News)