Patriotic Chinese cruise passengers skip Jeju port visit

SHANGHAI: When the Costa Serena cruise ship steamed into the South Korean tourist island of Jeju, Bai Liyun stayed on board, where crew had organised a magic show, games and even a wine-tasting. She was not alone. Most of her Chinese shipmates, estimated by passengers to number more than 3,000, followed suit, in a show of solidarity with their government’s vociferous opposition to South Korea’s decision to deploy a controversial missile defence system.

“We spent the whole day on the cruise ship. I felt very happy,” Bai, from China’s western province of Gansu, said yesterday in Shanghai, where the passengers disembarked on their return.

“As Chinese, we surely should answer the government’s call at a special time, which meant not going to Jeju Island.”

But the decision meant tour guides and about 80 tour buses were left waiting at the port, South Korean media reported.

Last week, airlines such as China Eastern Airlines Corp Ltd and Spring Airlines Co Ltd stopped website offers of flights between China’s eastern city of Ningbo and Jeju.

The decision to boycott Jeju “was made on mutual consensus” among the cruise passengers, most of whom were employees of the Chinese direct-sales company Resgreen Group on a junket, said a company spokeswoman, Jiang Wen.

Bai, a Resgreen employee, said colleagues had sent round messages before the trip to suggest that nobody set foot in South Korea. The company made the decision official before the cruise docked at Jeju, she said.

While South Korean exports from mascara to music have grown wildly popular in China, the port boycott shows that patriotism, deftly stoked by the ruling Communist Party, can quickly be brought to bear in diplomatic tiffs. — Reuters