The government is planning to launch stricter control on visa issuance during the World Cup from May to June in order to stop foreigners and even visitors to the football extravaganza from staying illegally in Korea. The Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Justice are mapping out guidelines in issuing related visas and plan to finalize the contents soon in a meeting with related ministries.

With regard to tour groups of Chinese tourists, they are reportedly assessing issuing group visas under a travel agency's responsibility. In this case tourists have to pay a deposit to the agency, which is forfeited if they stay illegally.

(Park Doo-shik, dspark@chosun.com )