SEOUL, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- South Koreans' overseas credit card spending grew in the third quarter despite the falling number of tourists to Japan, central bank data showed Thursday.
South Korean travelers spent 4.74 billion U.S. dollars abroad with credit card in the July-September quarter, up 1.4 percent from the previous quarter, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK).
South Koreans who went on an overseas trip shrank amid the ongoing campaign to boycott Japanese products and tour to Japan, but the tourists spent more in the quarter.
The number of South Korean tourists going abroad declined to 7.12 million in the third quarter from 7.14 million in the second quarter.
The boycott campaign came as Japan tightened regulations in July over its export to South Korea of three materials, vital to produce memory chips and display panels that are the mainstay of the South Korean export.
Japan's export curbs came in an apparent protest against the South Korean top court's rulings that ordered some of Japanese companies to pay reparation to the South Korean victims who were forced into hard labor without pay during the 1910-45 Japanese colonization of the Korean Peninsula.
