Lotte Department Store plans to open Line Friends pop-up store

South Korea's Lotte Department Store seeks to attract foreign tourists amid Golden Week holidays in Southeast Asia.

Tourists from the region are expected to visit South Korea during holidays such as Thailand's Songkran from Thursday to Saturday, Cambodia's Khmer New Year from Friday to Sunday and Indonesia's Lebaran from April 21-26.

Lotte on Thursday announced plans to open a large pop-up or temporary store to attract these visitors.

From Friday through April 23, Line Friends' Lucky House, which features popular characters from the instant messaging app Line, will be opened at Atrium Square on the first floor of Lotte World Mall in Seoul's Jamsil neighborhood.

Four-leaf clovers decorate the entire design and the green frog character Lenini is on the front to welcome tourists.

A large Lenini doll 3.5 meters tall is at the store entrance and the venue has about 1,000 popular character products on display.

Other attractions include BT21, a group of characters created with K-pop superstar group BTS, and Truz, another set made with YG Entertainment's boy band Treasure.

Lotte said sales from foreign tourists at the Jamsil store in the first quarter this year jumped more than five-fold from the same period last year.

The revenue performance was also 30% more than that in 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. The company attributed this to more foreign tourists drawn to landmarks near its Jamsil store such as Lotte World Tower.

Write to Young Chan Song at 0full@hankyung.com