Korea’s international air passenger traffic jumped 14.6 percent on-year in the first half due to a sharp rise in foreign visitors and more Koreans traveling abroad, the government said Wednesday.

The number of international air passengers came to 22.87 million, the highest number ever for the six-month period, according to the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs.

The previous first-half record was reached in January-June of last year, when numbers hit 19.95 million.

The ministry said compared to a year earlier, passenger traffic on Japanese routes soared 19.5 percent in the cited period. The number of passengers on flights to China also rose a solid 9.6 percent on-year, with gains for Southeast Asian countries reaching 17.2 percent.

It added that the number of Koreans traveling abroad moved up 9.1 percent on-year to a little over 10 million. The ministry said the growing popularity of low-cost carriers allowed more people to go abroad.

Of all international air travelers, 66.7 percent used flights offered by South Korea’s flag carriers, with the number of passengers on the country’s LCCs gaining 3.2 percentage points on-year to account for 6.8 percent of the total. Foreign airlines handled 33.3 percent of all air travelers.

The number of passengers on domestic flights rose 9.1 percent from a year earlier to 10.96 million.

Of the total, budget airlines ferried 4.72 million people, up 16.0 percent on-year, with the market share of such companies as Jeju Air Co. and Air Busan Co. reaching 43.1 percent. This is a market share gain of 2.6 percentage points from a year earlier.

The ministry said that despite gains in passenger traffic, the amount of air cargo handled contracted 1.4 percent from the first half of 2011 to 1.71 million tons. The drop is mainly due to sluggish global economic conditions that affected trade.

For the whole of 2012, the ministry said international passenger traffic numbers could surpass the 45 million mark for the first time ever, up from 42.65 million tallied last year. (Yonhap News)