China bans package tours to S. Korea in retaliation to THAAD

In South Korea’s modern history, the conservative governments had sought to hype up security issues and tensions with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) during the election period as voters tend to grant election victories to them for fear of the manipulated tensions. South Korea insists that the system’s sole goal is to defend it from aggression from rival nation North Korea.

During Korea’s Independence Day on Wednesday, Park’s allies and opponents held competing demonstrations in Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Square separated by 16,000 police and more than 100 buses.

As we noted, Lotte’s decision risked a further strong backlash from China which could have a dramatic impact on visitor numbers to Korea and duty free sales. Many have voluntarily initiated a boycott of South Korean products, especially those from Lotte group after it approved a land swap to station the THAAD system.

These disruptions are likely the result of a cyberattack by unidentified Chinese hackers. “The right decision would be for Lotte to defer or reject the THAAD deal”, warned Chinese state agency Xinhua in an editorial last month.

In response, Korean experts in foreign relations, businessmen, and ordinary citizens have said that it is unfair to blatantly threaten only the weak South Korean government and businesses, while remaining silent about the US government, American corporations, and Japan – which has also expressed interest in deploying a THAAD battery.

South Korean officials have said THAAD is a purely defensive measure against North Korean threats and does not target any other country.

But things escalated after Lotte Group, the Korean conglomerate perhaps best known as the maker of Choco Pie, formally signed a land-swap deal with the military on February 28.

South Korean stock trading offered a case in point Friday, with a selloff in hotels, cosmetic makers and other tourism-related companies that made the country’s benchmark the worst performer among Asian equity markets. It’s not the first time that China has targeted Korean pop culture to make its political points.

China and Russian Federation agreed in January to take unspecified “countermeasures” in response to THAAD. Korean music and TV dramas, including “Descendants of the Sun” and “Running Man”, have been hugely popular in China. “It is a really bad and worrying situation here”, said one Korean duty-free retailer to The Moodie Davitt Report. The Japanese and South Korean and foreign ministries could not be reached for comment. At present, millions of Chinese are working for more than 23,000 South Korean companies in China and South Koreans are one of the largest groups of inbound tourists in China, but these numbers can drop due to the retaliatory measures.

The local Chinese public security office has responded to the series of accidents by warning people not to violate the law, calling for “rational patriotism”. “Watching Korean dramas could be unsafe, and may even lead to legal troubles”, the ministry ominously posted on its social media page.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se had also on Tuesday called upon the global community for “extraordinary measures” against Pyongyang.