Dragged down by the drop in the number of visitors from the neighboring country, the total number of foreigners who visited South Korea last month dropped 40.8 percent to 1 million from 1.7 million, according to the data.

The sharp decline in Chinese tourists has been widely expected as Beijing has banned its travel agencies from selling package tours to Korea since mid-March in apparent retaliation over Seoul's deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system.

The ban, which has especially wrecked havoc on South Korean companies in the retail and duty-free sectors, has yet to be lifted.

Chinese visitors accounted for nearly half of some 17 million foreigners in the country last year.

South Korea also saw the number of Japanese tourists fall 8.4 percent on-year to 170,634 last month, due largely to geopolitical instability on the Korean Peninsula following North Korea's military provocations. It also marked an on-year drop for a fourth consecutive month.

The number of outbound nationals, meanwhile, came to 2.38 million in July, up 14.5 percent from a year earlier, the data showed. (Yonhap)