Lingle is leading a 50-member delegation of Hawai'i officials and business people on a trip to promote the state. The trip began in China on June 9.

She said that 40,000 South Koreans visited Hawai'i last year, and the state wants to increase that to 44,000 in 2005.

That's sharply lower than the 120,000 South Koreans who traveled to Hawai'i in 1997, the year the Asian financial crisis started in Thailand and later spread to other economies in the region, including South Korea's.

Despite the drop in numbers, South Koreans are still the second-biggest group of foreign visitors to the Islands behind Japan, with approximately 1.5 million, said Rex Johnson, president and CEO of the Hawai'i Tourism Authority. He and a group of Hawai'i business leaders are traveling with Lingle.

Lingle said she hoped that South Korea eventually would be included in the U.S. visa waiver program, which would mean tourists would not need to apply for visas before their trips.

But according to the Korea Herald newspaper, Lingle said South Korea is unlikely to be placed on the United States' visa waiver list anytime soon, and that she and the U.S. Embassy in Seoul will try to help make visa issuance for Koreans smoother and faster.

The visa issue also was brought up during a luncheon with South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon.

"We are making full efforts to meet the standards of the (visa waiver) program," Ban said in a speech, adding that the 3 percent rejection rate for South Korean visa applicants to the United States was "commendable."

Jackie Young, former co-chairwoman of the Korean Visa Waiver Committee, said the committee understands that getting South Korea on the visa waiver list would take some time.

"We understand that it's going to take a while," she said. "We knew that we were working on something that would take, we were hoping, within five years. It's not imminent because the (visa applicant) refusal rate has been too high, and we have to work on that."