Foot traffic between South Korea and China has practically come to a halt. Visitor numbers between the two countries fell significantly from 2019, the year before the Covid-19 pandemic, as the demand for travel and business trips has been slow to recover in the pandemic’s aftermath and is even lower than numbers during the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system) crisis in 2017, the height of Sino-Korean tensions.

According to an analysis by Maeil Business Newspaper of the country’s aviation information portal system on Sunday, the number of passengers traveling between Korea and China in the first quarter of 2024 totaled 2,869,564 (with 25,047 flights). The figure is up more than seven times from 387,128 in the first quarter of 2023, when China was still battling Covid-19, but down 30.6 percent from 4,138,204 in the pre-pandemic first quarter of 2019.

The number is also lower by around 20 percent from the 3,617,158-figure recorded in the first quarter of 2018, when China restricted group tours to Korea in retaliation for Seoul’s deployment of the THAAD system in the country. Excluding the Covid-19 pandemic period (2020-2023), the number of visitors traveling between the two countries is at its lowest level in 11 years.

“There are fewer incentives for Chinese people to visit Korea as the relationship between the two countries remains poor,” Kang Jun-young, a professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Affairs’ Graduate School of International and Area Studies, said. “This situation will continue unless we come up with differentiated contents that induce Chinese people to visit Korea.“

Koreans are also reluctant to travel to China, given the Chinese government‘s recent measures to tighten anti-espionage laws. Experts observed that the decline in people-to-people exchanges between Korea and China is attributed to a combination of factors, including the trade structure between the two countries and the Chinese economy, which is experiencing a slowdown in domestic demand and consumption.

Meanwhile, cargo volumes from China are increasing rapidly. Air cargo between the two countries hit 166,092 tons, up 37.2 percent from a year ago, In the first quarter of 2024 to reach a scale similar to that of the first quarter of 2019 (168,224 tons). The rapid recovery of cargo volumes despite a significant drop in passenger traffic is largely influenced by a surge in the number of Korean customers using Chinese e-commerce platforms.

According to Statistics Korea, Koreans’ direct purchases via Chinese online shopping malls totaled 3.29 trillion won ($2.39 billion) in 2023.

”If the relationship between the two countries deteriorates even further, the risk of China cutting off supplies of materials such as rare earths and urea water to Korea will inevitably become higher,“ according to Kim Heung-kyu, director of the China Policy Institute at Ajou University.

By Song Gwang-sup, Shin Yoon-jae, and Yoon Yeon-hae

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]