Traveling for foreigners to become easier in Korea, Interior Ministry says

Train ticket purchases and reservations for tourist attractions will be made easier for foreigners, with more websites accepting foreign credit cards and not requiring a Korean phone number to sign up.

An SRT train leaving for Daegu [YONHAP]

Train ticket purchases and reservations for tourist attractions will be made easier for foreigners, with more websites accepting foreign credit cards and not requiring a Korean phone number to sign up.

Users will soon be able to use foreign credit cards to purchase tickets for the SRT bullet trains, the Interior Ministry said on Thursday.

It added that the change will be implemented within the first half of this year.

The Seoul Arts Center, the National Recreation Forest Management Office and the Korea Forest Welfare Institute will also join the effort to make reservations easier for foreign visitors, such as by allowing identity verification with email addresses.

The change will make ticket reservations easier for tourists, as the current system only accepts verification through Korean phone numbers.

"There's an increasing number of foreigners visiting Korea as our cultural attractions become popular, but the difficulties tourists face when they want to enjoy those attractions have been a problem," the ministry's head of administration and civil service planning, Seo Ju-hyeon, said.

"By making those venues and services easier for everyone to use, we hope it will have positive effects on the local economies of areas frequently visited by foreigners."

BY LEE TAE-HEE [lee.taehee2@joongang.co.kr]