Korean cuisine is increasingly popular with foreign tourists.

Along with the increasing interest in K-Food, the foods that foreign tourists seek when visiting Korea are also becoming more diverse.

Foreign tourists are spending more and more money on food when traveling to Korea. Photo: Yonhap

According to the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO), through analyzing credit card spending data of foreigners from 2018 to July 2025, besides traditional Korean dishes such as kimchi, bulgogi, bibimbap, foreign tourists' interest in everyday cuisine such as instant noodles (ramyeon), kimbap and street snacks is also increasing.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture , Food and Rural Affairs of South Korea, the total cumulative export value of agricultural and food products as of August this year reached 9,400 billion won (6.71 billion USD), up 5.1% over the same period in 2024 and setting a historic record high.

The food category with the highest year-on-year growth in card transaction volume was ice cream, at 35%, followed by convenience store food at 34% and waffles/croffles at 25.5%.

Compared to the same period in 2024, the number of credit card transactions by foreigners as of July this year showed the strongest increase in rice cakes (tteok) and traditional sweets (hangwa) up 76.9%, followed by noodles and dumplings (mandu) up 55.2%, (spicy pork bone soup (gamjatang) up 44%).

In terms of total credit card transactions in the first seven months of 2025, coffee shops topped the list with 8.9 million transactions, followed by bakeries with 3 million and hamburgers with 2.3 million. Of the top 10 brands with the highest number of hamburger transactions, six were domestic Korean franchises.

According to social media analysis, 40.1% of convenience store-related posts were food-related, and the main keywords included instant noodles (ramyeon) at 14.1%, coffee at 10.5%, and cookies/snack at 7%.

Lee Mi Sook, head of the KTO’s Tourism Data Strategy Team, said that as the latest trends are shared in real time globally, the daily lives of Koreans are spreading as new experiences to foreigners, and vice versa, this interaction is reflected back to Koreans, which is evident in the tourism industry. The KTO will proactively grasp these changes and actively apply them to tourism policy formulation and domestic marketing to serve the needs of foreign visitors.

Source: https://baotintuc.vn/du-lich/am-thuc-han-quoc-ngay-cang-pho-bien-voi-du-khach-nuoc-ngoai-20251021131948506.htm