South Korea May Soon Offer Visa-on-Arrival to Indians

South Korea may extend visa-on-arrival facility to Indians, said South Korea's Ambassador to India Joon-gyu Lee. The Times of India has reported the Ambassador saying that Seoul is closely looking to extend VoA facility similar to what India has extended to its citizens. "While doing so we will do our best to improve the visa issuing process to facilitate and speed it up. I believe that the visa-on-arrival scheme provided for our citizens is contributing a lot in increasing the number of Korean tourists into India," said the envoy Joon-gyu Lee, as reported by The Times of India. People from South Korea account for fifth of total e-visas for India since the introduction of Electronic Visa facility in November 2014. The arrivals from South Korea stood at 18.26% of total arrivals in the country. The statistics from Tourism department reveal that in 2013, before the Electronic Visa facility was introduced, one lakh plus South Koreans came to India for tourism and leisure. Most of them visited popular Buddhist sites and the popular Golden Triangle (Agra, Delhi and Jaipur). And this year the numbers are expected to be much higher due to easy visa process. Byungsun Lee, director with the Korea Tourism Office in India told IANS, ”The visa-on-arrival has definitely eased the travelling for South Korean nationals. Of course, a similar scheme for Indians will create an impact in the inflow of tourists to Korea.” Source: The Times of India | IANS