Tourist arrivals here from Japan rose for the second consecutive month in March, industry data showed Sunday.

According to the data released by the Korea Tourism Organization, a total of 224,328 Japanese tourists visited South Korea in March, marking a rise of 55.3 percent over the previous month and a year-on-year increase of 2.5 percent from 218,932 in the same month of 2015.

In February, 144,493 Japanese came to visit South Korea, rising 1.3 percent from 142,587 recorded a year earlier.

Before February, tourist arrivals from Japan showed year-on-year decreases for 41 months in a row, starting in September 2012, when the number of Japanese visitors fell 3.8 percent to 308,882. As a result, the share of Japanese in overall foreign tourist arrivals in South Korea fell from 31.6 percent in 2012 to 13.9 percent last year. The corresponding figure slightly rose to 14.1 percent in the first quarter of this year.

KTO officials said Japanese visitors here had decreased until last year due to the nuclear accident in Japan and economic slump but the trend is expected to be reversed starting this year thanks to the strong yen and aggressive tourism promotion by the South Korean government. (Yonhap)