The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (Minister PARK Bo Gyoon, MCST) announced that Korea ranked 15 out of 117 nations in the World Economic Forum (WEF) Travel and Tourism Development Index in 2021. This is the highest record South Korea ranked ever since the World Economic Forum published the travel and tourism index on a biennial basis since 2007. By country, Japan, the United States, Spain, France, and Germany took the top rank. In Asia, Korea ranked 4^th place, followed by Japan, Singapore, China,  and South Korea. South Korea ranked in 15^th overall and has stepped up 4 stages from 19^th in 2019, which is the largest increase among the top 30 countries.

WEF has published “The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index” every two years since 2007, and from year it has expanded and reorganized into “The Travel & Tourism Development Index”. WEF said that the reason for the reorganization was to reflect the environmental changes caused by COVID-19 and strengthened indicators that can benchmark other countries.

   Considering the purpose of this categorization, 38 indicators were excluded from the existing 90 indicators, and 60 new indicators were added to make a total of 112 indicators. New indicators such as climate, environment, greenhouse gas, digital platform utilization, poverty rate, social security expenditure, and gender equality were added. Taking into account of the infectious disease crisis caused by COVID-19, access to medical services and the incidence of infectious diseases were added.