Despite the economic slump and sluggish consumption, South Koreans' spending on trips overseas recorded an all-time high last year.

According to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Bank of Korea, expenditures on foreign trips last year jumped seven-point-four percent from the year before to over 23 billion U.S. dollars. 

The increase is more than triple the growth in gross domestic product or private sector spending last year, which were both in the upper two percent range.

Spending on overseas trips has been setting fresh records each year, coming to 15 billion dollars in 2011 to 23-point-one billion dollars last year.

The Korea Tourism Research Institute says 22-point-38 million South Koreans went abroad in 2016, up eleven-point-six percent from the year before.

A travel agency official said with the general improvement in income levels and a wide variety of ways to travel, the number of people traveling is bound to rise even more despite the downbeat economy.

The official said chances are high that the number of outbound travelers and their amount of spending will set another record this year.