Jeju Island, South Korea's most popular holiday destination, appears to be increasingly favored by locals as an alternative to overseas travel amid the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, a report indicated Thursday.

The report released by the state-funded Korea Culture and Tourism Institute (KCTI) showed that domestic tourism to the southern resort island has been almost fully restored to the pre-coronavirus level amid overseas travel restrictions.

It said the number of Koreans who went abroad in March decreased 48.4 percent on-year to 74,000, whereas the number of visitors to Jeju soared 97.3 percent on-year to 1.07 million in April.

The number of overseas travelers in January and February also tumbled 96.6 percent and 93.5 percent, respectively. The number of international flights departing from South Korea also fell 56.1 percent in March from a year ago. Compared with the pre-COVID-19 figure of March 2019, the decrease rate amounted to 92.7 percent.

By contrast, the number of Jeju visitors has been on a steady rise, with on-year growth rates reaching 26.2 percent in February and 84 percent in March, the KCTI report said.

Compared with April 2019, when about 1.3 million visitors arrived on Jeju, last month's figure was still lower by 17.6 percent.

But in terms of domestic tourists, last month's figure was only 9.1 percent lower than the corresponding number for April 2019, it said, noting the island was visited by 1.05 million locals in April, up 94.6 percent from a year ago.

"More springtime tourists and honeymooners have visited Jeju instead of traveling abroad," the KCTI said, explaining that domestic tourism to the island reached 90 percent of the 2019 level. (Yonhap)