MANILA, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- Nearly 5.65 million international tourists, including 306,549 Chinese, have visited the Philippines since January, according to the Philippines' Department of Tourism (DOT) data released Wednesday.

As of Tuesday, the Philippines has welcomed 5,646,351 international tourist arrivals, still short of the DOT's target of 7.7 million for 2024, the agency's data showed.

Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco said 91.66 percent of the tourist arrivals were foreign tourists, while the remaining 8.34 percent were overseas Filipinos.

Tourism revenue from January to Dec. 15 this year reached 712 billion pesos (about 12.1 billion U.S. dollars), the tourism chief said.

South Korea, followed by the United States and Japan, remains the Philippines' top source of foreign tourists this year, the data showed.

In 2023, a total of 5,450,557 international visitors entered the country, 91.8 percent of which were foreigners, while the remaining were overseas Filipinos.