TOURISM Tourism to S.Korea restarting
▶ Demand still tepid following THAAD issue: insiders
“I think the emotional knots between China and South Korea over the THAAD issue have not been entirely unraveled.” Jin Qiangyi
Chinese tourists’ interest in South Korea appears to be gradually recovering with some travel agencies starting to launch travel routes to the country, although others are still waiting for policies to become more clear.
Demand for tourism to the country plunged after its relations with China were impaired by South Korea implementing the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in 2017.
On Thursday, online travel agency Ctrip confirmed to the Global Times that it had not received any government notice to reopen online tourism itineraries to South Korea. Currently, there are no South Korea-bound tourism products being sold on Ctrip’s website.
A PR representative from tourism website Lvmama.com also told the Global Times that the website is not currently selling any South Koreabound products.
On Wednesday, a report from the South Korea-based Yonhap News Agency noted that Chinese online tourism agencies had started selling South Korean tourism products, suggesting that China’s restrictions on South Korea-bound tourism had been “relaxed comprehensively.”
Jin Qiangyi, director of the Asia Research Center at China’s Yanbian University, said that some Chinese tourism websites on Wednesday uploaded South Korean travel products but then quickly removed them again for unclear reasons.
“I think the emotional knots between China and South Korea over the THAAD issue have not been entirely unraveled,” Jin told the Global Times.
China has firmly opposed the deployment of the THAAD system in South Korea and group tours to the country were halted in March 2017.
Mediocre demand
Recently, some domestic travel agencies have resumed travel lines to South Korea but have found that Chinese tourists’ passion for visiting the country has not entirely recovered.
The Shanghai-based travel agency China Spring Tour started offering South Korea-bound tours in September and now organizes two or three tour groups each week for two South Korean destinations: Seoul and Jeju Island. Each tour group consists of no more than 20 people.
“This is a limited scale compared with the past [before the THAAD issue], when there were tour groups flying to South Korea almost every day,” Zhou Weihong, deputy general manager of China Spring Tour, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Zhou said there are several factors that could be behind this lackluster demand, such as the fact that Chinese tourists now have a wider range of options for overseas travel and are more careful in choosing where to go.
But she said that things are moving in a promising direction as “there were almost no Chinese customers flying to South Korea this time last year.”
A 20-year-old student surnamed Ding told the Global Times on Thursday that she planned to visit South Korea next year.
“I’ve always wanted to visit South Korea, but I had to suppress my travel impulse when the THAAD issue broke out. Now that the two countries are warming up in relations, I will travel there,” she said, adding that she is a fan of some South Korean singers and wants to visit the places where they have performed.
Jin also said he believes that the relations between China and South Korea will warm up eventually. “I don’t think there are fundamental conflicts between the two countries,” he said.
Director of the Asia Research Center at Yanbian University