Korea’s air passenger traffic surges nearly 20% in 2024 on overseas travel

Korea’s air passenger traffic jumped sharply from a year earlier in 2024, nearly reaching the pre-pandemic level on increased overseas travel, data showed Sunday.

The number of airline passengers at Korean airports came to more than 120 million, up 19.5 percent from about 100.5 million tallied in 2023, according to the data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.

The number represents 97.3 percent of the record 123.36 million posted in 2019. The number had dipped to 29.5 percent of the record figure in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, before recovering to 81.5 percent of the 2019 tally in 2023.

The sharp increase…