In March of 2017, the Chinese government banned its citizens from booking trips to South Korea through travel agencies as a show of displeasure with the South Korean government’s decision to install THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense). The idle streets of Myŏngdong now bear little trace of the bustling energy they had enjoyed in 2016 when Hallyu tourism was at its peak; just last summer, hundreds of buses filed into Panpo Han Riverside Park, carrying eight thousand Chinese tourists to a city-sponsored samgyet’ang (ginseng chicken soup) feast and a miniconcert featuring original soundtracks from the popular television serial Descendants of the Sun (2016). Meanwhile, the flow of Japanese tourists has palpably thinned over the past decade as Korea-Japan relations have grown sour over territorial disputes and postcolonial reconciliation issues, such as the Japanese Comfort Woman Agreement of 2015. With rumors of FTA and defense-budget renegotiations hanging heavily over the...
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