[Yonhap News Photo]
A top media regulator warned Monday of a setback in exports of South Korea's pop culture wave "Hallyu" to China due to a diplomatic row over the deployment of an advanced US missile defense system on the Korean peninsula.
The warning came after Korea Communications Commission vice chairman Kim Jae-hong visited China to discuss cooperations between South Korean and Chinese TV stations. The commission is South Korea's media regulation agency. Kim saw his scheduled trip to a TV station in China's Jiangsu province canceled suddenly for unspecified reasons.
Kim said China's provincial governments and private sectors were concerned about the fallout from a diplomatic row caused by Seoul's decision to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.
"I don't think the Chinese central government has completely suspended cooperation and exchanges with South Korea," he told reporters. "However, I've detected signs of Hallyu exports running on a reef because local governments and private companies are seeing how the wind blows."
South Korean Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho has ruled out the possibility of China imposing any full-scale economic retaliation against South Korea or a dramatic setback in economic ties between Asia's biggest and fourth-largest economies.
But fears have been growing in South Korea that the THAAD dispute could seriously hurt economic and diplomatic relations between Beijing and Seoul.
US and South Korean officials have stressed the missile defense system would be used solely to cope with North Korean nuclear and missile threats without being directed towards any third-party nation.
Beijing has warned the THAAD deployment would "seriously" hurt strategic interests of China and other countries as well as the security balance in Northeast Asia.
The THAAD row comes as South Korea seeks to balance the strategic priorities of its main military ally, the United States, against those of its biggest trade partner, China.
Some experts said China could take retaliatory steps if a THAAD battery arrives in South Korea.
"We may have to make full preparations. There might be a (retaliatory) action if South Korea pushes ahead with the deployment of a THAAD system and strengthens an alliance with the United States," said Kim Heung-kyu, director of Ajou University's China Policy Institute.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
