The Republic of Korea recorded a 19.9 percent year-on-year (YoY) increase in the number of international flight passengers during the summer vacation season, fully recovering to the pre-pandemic level, data showed Sunday.

Offering data compiled by the Korea Airports Corp. and the Incheon International Airport Corp, Yonhap News Agency reported that a total of 15.69 million people used international flights at Korean airports in July and August, up nearly 20 percent from a year earlier.

This year’s figure came to about 97 percent of that logged in 2019.

By destination, the number of travellers using flights linking Korea and Japan came to 4.17 million during the cited period, which was the largest number for a single country.

The figure marked an 18.5 percent YoY increase and 25 percent growth from the 2019 level.

Around 2.79 million people took flights to and from China in the summer, which marked 58.9 percent YoY growth.

The number of passengers travelling to and from America advanced 16.3 percent to 1.23 million, while demand for flights linking Europe inched down 0.2 percent to 879,000, the data showed.