A clerk at CJ Olive Young's store in Myeongdong, Seoul, left, helps a customer with the company's new portable translation device, Thursday. Courtesy of CJ Olive Young

CJ Olive Young has introduced portable translation devices for foreign customers at its 1,340 stores nationwide as the Korean beauty product seller's sales to shoppers from overseas have been on a steep rise, according to the beauty retailer of major conglomerate CJ Group, Thursday.

The new device offers simultaneous interpretation for 16 languages, including English, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Russian and Mongolian, among others.

The device also offers a visual translation feature, allowing users to understand descriptions of products written in Korean by scanning the text with the device's camera. The device then displays the Korean text in the target language.

With the device, the company hopes to break down the language barrier for foreign customers and expects they will access an extensive range of information and tips on K-beauty products through curation and verbal explanations from the store's clerks.

The devices will also raise efficiency for store employees serving customers, according to the company.

"We wanted our foreign customers to fully experience our services without language barriers interfering," a company official said. "This way, our products developed by the country's small-to-medium-size companies will become more popular among our consumers from around the world."

Olive Young's new store feature comes after the brand last year confirmed its robust popularity among tourists to Korea. The company said Thursday that foreign shoppers who used its tax refund service last year numbered 3.7 million. Considering that tourists visiting Korea last year numbered 8.8 million overall, according to the Korea Tourism Knowledge & Information System, a significant proportion of them spared time to shop at Olive Young stores.

Sales figures proved the brand's rising popularity. Olive Young's sales to foreign customers last year saw a year-on-year increase of 660 percent. Compared to the figure from 2019 before COVID-19 hit the country the following year, performance has more than quadrupled.

The lion's share of sales were recorded in popular tourist areas. Not only did the stores in Seoul's key tourist hotspots — Myeongdong, Hongdae and Dongdaemun — see outstanding performances, but high sales figures also came from a broader range of regions across the country, such as Seoul's Gangnam District, Seongsu neighborhood, Busan and Jeju Island.

Unlike in the past, when Chinese tourists marked the highest number of foreign tourists to the country, Olive Young is now seeing more customers from Japan, Southeast Asian nations, the Middle East and English-speaking nations.