Abstract
This study estimates the economic effects of the tourism industry in South Korea by using the Input‐Output Model in terms of output, income, employment, value added, indirect tax, and import The distribution of income is also examined in the tourism industry among various social classes using the Lorenz curve and the Gini coefficient The results show that the tourism industry performed better than most of other industries in terms of generating employment and tax revenues. The tourism industry also performs better in terms of minimizing leakage, but more poorly in terms of the linkage effect as compared to the majority of other industries. The Gini coefficient and the Lorenz curve show that the tourism industry performs moderately well in the distribution of income among household income classes as compared to the majority of other industries.