While the opening of the Korea-Japan World Cup is approaching in 50 days, connections to local airports from Incheon International Airport have hardly been established it was reported Thursday, which will cause inconvenience for foreign tourists visiting the country to watch the games. IIA estimates a maximum of 340,000 foreigners will enter the country through the airport during the game period.

According to the airport corporation, IIA is exclusively for international routes with only two domestic connections to Busan and Jeju. Therefore, Chinese tourist who visit the country to watch the country's game in Gwangju will have to catch a domestic flight at Gimpo Airport, some 40km away from IIA, or have to take a 5-hour airport shuttle ride, which only operates six times a day.

Even the existing two routes will hardly meet the tourists demand as the Incheon-Busan operation is scheduled three times daily, and Incheon-Jeju service flies only twice a day on Friday and Sunday only. Especially, operations are concentrated in the early morning and evening, so tourists arriving at the IIC during the day will have to experience the inconvenience of an unreasonably long wait.

Despite the airport corporation requesting national air carriers to operate connections to all hosting cities and expand the two existing lines, Korean Air and Asiana Airline are not planning to throw in extra flights, claiming that the passenger demand is not likely to be high and Incheon and Gimpo are close enough.

(Kim Seong-beom, sbkim@chosun.com )