Details
South Korea has opened up its borders a bit more since late September: groups of three or more can now enter the country from China without visas. This new entry model only applies to organized groups or tourists travelling together. For most travellers, entering the country simply marks the start of their vacation, but for the government, it is an important political signal. It is the first time since the 2018 Winter Olympics that Seoul has allowed an arrangement of this kind.
Canan Kus works in the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Beijing Office.
Back then, visa-free travel was meant as a friendly gesture — a neighbourly invitation. Seven years later, the same model looks different. It is a response to Beijing’s November 2024 decision to allow South Koreans to travel to China without a visa for up to 30 days.
It is also a barter agreement that combines economic interests and political gestures. Officially, the programme is meant to promote tourism and prop up the battered domestic economy, but nobody in Korean society interprets visa-free entry for Chinese tourist groups as a merely economic policy. On the contrary, the issue raises the question of how the country will situate itself amid the tensions between the major powers.
APEC Summit in Gyeongju
In the international arena, South Korea has finally come into the spotlight. In late October, President Lee Jae Myung and his government hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Gyeongju, the historical centre of the ancient kingdom of Silla. Under this year’s motto “Building a Sustainable Tomorrow”, the summit took place amid intensifying global trade disputes, fragile supply chains, and growing technological competition. The Gyeongju Declaration, the summit’s concluding document, affirmed the Putrajaya Vision 2040, which advocates increased digital integration, promotion of innovation, more resilient infrastructure, and support for small and medium-sized businesses.
This is routine for most delegations, but for South Korea it was an opportunity to make its mark in order to cement its economic position as well as its diplomatic heft in the region. Thus both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump were invited to Gyeongju for symbolic purposes.
Diplomatic gestures also clarify how the new government would like to manage its role. Outside the formal proceedings of the APEC summit, Trump was presented with a reproduction of the golden crown from the Silla period as a gift. The crown, which was made some time between the fourth and sixth centuries, is a kind of mythical object whose use remains a mystery. For that reason, there was rampant speculation on social media that the gift might contain a secret message. In diplomatic terms, however, it was intended as a show of political stability. After all, the Silla dynasty mostly represents two things today: the political unification of the peninsula and globe-spanning trade flows that reached across Eurasia.
Trade With China, Security with the US?
These diplomatic gestures — from visa-free group travel from China to the APEC summit — indicate the path that Lee’s new government is taking. Its official messages have emphasized that Xi’s stay during the summit also included a short state visit. Concrete topics have only been described in broad terms, however details about trade, supply chains, and the previous discussions on the periphery of the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Malaysia were not addressed.
The Lee government is pursuing a strategy of “dual pragmatism”: trade with China and security with the US. Nonetheless, these gestures of rapprochement, which serve as signs of sovereign foreign policy on the international stage, are taken by many in South Korea as an expression of dependence on China. Lee’s pragmatism is encountering a mood in South Korean society that is neither pragmatic nor patient — particularly among the opposition. This autumn, demonstrators repeatedly gathered outside government buildings and in the narrow streets around the old palaces. The signs criticized the Chinese president’s visit, but their rage was directed primarily at their own government.
South Korea is caught in a predicament in which economic dependencies, security obligations, and social expectations can hardly be reconciled any more.
One striking aspect is who is protesting: mostly older, conservative men associated with the Yoon government, which was toppled after an attempted coup. These groups previously mobilized around pro-American solidarity, anti-Chinese sentiment, and national-conservative issues. Additionally, smaller religious associations, veterans’ groups, and far-right activists were also involved. The protest appeared to be a chaotic mix of nationalism and fear of Chinese influence. Some people directed their anger at Chinese tourists, others directly at Lee’s political line.
Economic Imperatives
The fact that groups of Chinese travellers are wandering through Seoul or Busan again is only the most visible expression of an economic trend that has long been firmly established. Many critics regard the return of the visitors not simply as everyday tourism, but as a sign that the region’s economic centre of gravity continues to shift toward China. Online, opponents of the Lee government express concern that the visa waiver might only be the start of a much deeper dependency.
What they often overlook is the fact that South Korea’s economy has always been closely intertwined with China. China remains both its most important export market and its biggest supplier of upstream products, electronics, and consumer goods. This mutual dependency was profitable for South Korea for decades. Starting in 1992, it maintained a trade surplus with China, primarily by exporting technology, machinery, and semiconductors while importing raw materials and intermediate products in exchange. In 2024, South Korea imported US$139.9 billion worth of goods from China, however the tide had already turned the previous year when, for the first time in over three decades, the country marked its first trade deficit with China, running to US$17.5 billion. That happened because Chinese industry now produces the same goods that once made South Korea successful: batteries, chips, and consumer electronics. This tidal shift shows that China itself now dominates the supply chains that were once the basis of South Korea’s export-driven economic miracle. Chinese industry produces increasingly high quality semiconductors, batteries, and displays — and at lower cost. In short: products that once came from South Korea are now made in China.
There is also a political dimension to this: while conservative president Yoon Suk Yeol’s government pursued a one-sided orientation toward the US, dialogue with China cooled. As a result, Lee Jae Myung inherited a stagnant export sector, sagging demand at home, and plummeting sales in the country’s most important market.
Lee’s strategy of re-establishing close links between China and South Korea therefore has to be viewed in a context of economic damage control. Consumption and tourism are a good way to build trust. “Stimulating the domestic market” is one thing, but the flow of Chinese capital is still indispensable for South Korea’s growth model, and it also needs to be revived.
Between Washington and Beijing
In October 2025, Trump and Lee announced a trade agreement under which South Korea would invest massively in the US in exchange for reduced tariffs. This deal also illustrates the fact that the new government is trying to navigate between Washington and Beijing without veering irreversibly to one side or the other. The disputes over relaxing visa requirements and bilateral summits are therefore not isolated events but rather part of a more comprehensive strategy concerning sovereignty and security — and so also the question of South Korea’s place in a world that once again seems to be increasingly divided into blocs and spheres of influence.
This illustrates the fact that South Korea is caught in a predicament in which economic dependencies, security obligations, and social expectations can hardly be reconciled any more. Where domestic policy is concerned, mistrust, economic worries, and geopolitical fears are colliding. In terms of foreign policy, the attempt to improve (trade) relations with China without endangering South Korea’s alliance with the US remains a delicate undertaking.
It is precisely in this polarized terrain that there is an apparent need to look at who in the country will bear the consequences of this balancing act.
The debate over visa-free entry for tourist groups is therefore only the visible part of a much deeper conflict. Lee’s policy assumes that economic dependence cannot simply be offset by loyalty in security policy. If his government is now trying to come to terms with the two leading world powers, which are increasingly in competition with one another, then that is above all an indication that a mid-sized country whose prosperity is based on exports and technological integration has a relatively narrow scope of action with respect to economic and foreign policy.
It is precisely in this polarized terrain that there is an apparent need to look at who in the country will bear the consequences of this balancing act. It is not the people who open summits or present golden crowns. The people affected are those whose everyday lives are directly linked to global competition: people employed in industrial centres, migrant labourers with tenuous contracts, small retailers whose income is vulnerable to fluctuations in tourism, and young people whose future opportunities are increasingly determined by flashes of economic and security lightning between the major powers.
Translated by Joseph Keady and Martin Hiatt for Gegensatz Translation Collective.
