Beijing travel agencies yesterday said they could no longer arrange trips to South Korea, following reports that China had ordered a clampdown to punish Seoul over its plans to host a US missile-defense system.
South Korea’s fifth-largest company, Lotte, is facing an escalating backlash in China after providing land for the military facility, which Beijing fears will undermine its own defense capabilities.
So far, Beijing has refrained from taking any public retaliatory steps against South Korea.
Photo: AFP
However, tour operators contacted by reporters confirmed the suspension of trips to South Korea, after Yonhap news agency on Thursday reported that China’s tourism administration had issued a verbal directive on the issue.
“Please consider going to other countries. Trips to South Korea are suspended due to policy and safety factors,” said a staffer at CYTS (中國青年旅行社) online service, one of China’s biggest travel companies.
Staff at two other leading travel-service providers said the same.
“You can’t register for a trip to South Korea, it’s suspended. I don’t know why, nor when it will be resumed,” an employee at BTG Travel (北京神舟國際旅行社) said.
Chinese travelers are a major and growing source of tourism revenue for South Korea.
Yonhap’s report said the ban was likely to be expanded to travel firms in other cities, citing “industry sources” in China.
Allies South Korea and the US last year agreed to install the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to counter growing nuclear and missile threats by North Korea.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said THAAD “jeopardizes” regional security and has warned of unspecified consequences against Seoul and Washington.
The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Tuesday signed a land swap deal with retail giant Lotte Group for the stationing of the system and said it would push for its deployment this year.
Lotte has already suffered business setbacks and boycott threats in China over the plan.
The China National Tourism Administration did not respond to a request for comment.
However, it posted travel tips that urged Chinese tourists to carefully consider “the risks of outbound travel” when considering trips to South Korea.
Asked about the reported travel halt, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs spokesman Geng Shuang (耿爽) dismissed the question during a daily briefing.
“Instead of chasing shadows and working on speculation, it’s better to focus on the concrete issue so as to avoid further damage to bilateral relations,” he said.
On Wednesday, the Chinese producer of one of the country’s most popular snacks withdrew its goods from Lotte Marts across China, saying it would “never cooperate” with the company.
A range of other actions have been taken, including a consumer boycott in Jilin Province, where protesters last weekend unfurled a banner at a Lotte Mart store saying “Lotte supports THAAD, get out of China immediately.”
Last month, Lotte was forced to halt construction of a US$2.6 billion theme-park project in northeastern China after authorities suddenly found safety problems, and Lotte Web sites have this week been downed by apparent cyberattacks.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS