Seoul Botanic Park attracts over 10m visitors since opening

The Seoul Botanic Park has attracted more than 10 million visitors since its opening 30 months ago, the city government said Sunday.

Located in western Seoul, the park began to accept visitors in October 2018 before formally opening in May 2019.

It is the country's first botanic park built inside a city, with a forest, lake, wetlands and greenhouses laid across 500,000 square meters of land, according to the city government.

A total of 10.04 million people have visited the park since October 2018, including more than 550,000 last month, or about 18,000 per day.

The monthly figure is 3.6 times the number of visitors in March 2020, which the city government attributed to more people seeking a respite from COVID-19 restrictions.

The best attendance record was tallied last October, when the park received around 600,000 visitors.

The park charges up to 5,000 won ($4.50) for entry to its themed gardens, but admission is free to all other areas, including the forest field, wetland and lake garden.

The paid area, featuring native Korean plants and greenery from 12 tropical and Mediterranean cities, attracted 680,000 visitors in total.

"We will set a model for operating botanic parks by exhibiting various plants, studying and preserving different species and offering special programs, while fulfilling our role as a public botanical garden," the park's director Han Jung-hoon said. (Yonhap)