Chinese tourists’ passion for visiting Korea has remained unaffected by the diplomatic standoff between Seoul and Beijing over the deployment of an advanced U.S. missile defense battery on Korean soil, data showed Thursday.
The Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) said 910,000 Chinese visited Korea in July, 32 percent up from a year ago. It marks a new monthly high in the number of Chinese tourists.
Notably, after the Seoul government announced on July 8 that the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system will be deployed in the country, about 1.02 million Chinese visited Korea over the following five weeks. The number of visitors increased 15.9 percent from 881,000 between June 4 and July 7, the previous five weeks before the announcement.
The KTO said it did not use 2015 data for comparison because that year was heavily affected by the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak.
“Exchanges between the two countries remain active in private sectors,” a KTO official said. “We believe they have become important partners to each other in the tourism industry.”
In the first seven months of this year, 9.8 million foreigners traveled to Korea, 23 percent up from the same period in 2014. Among them, 4.73 million were Chinese.
“We will keep trying to develop various programs to make Korea more attractive to Chinese tourists,” the official said.
Many Korean government officials and businessmen have concerns that the deployment of the THAAD system will trigger an economic backlash from the Chinese government, which has major influence over pretty much everything in the one-party state.
Officials in the tourism, technology, retail and automotive industries have closely monitored how the escalating political tension between the two nations will affect their businesses targeting Chinese consumers.