hankyoreh

Travelers walk past duty free stores at Incheon International Airport. (Yonhap)

With demand for travel to Japan increasing due to a weakening yen, Korea’s domestic airlines are adding flights to Japan and running relevant promotions. In contrast, they are reducing the number of flights to China, as demand for travel to the country has decreased due to worsening South Korea-China relations.

Jeju Air revealed on Monday that it would be adding a total of 760 international flights, mainly for popular routes such as those to Japan, Southeast Asia, and Oceania in time for the summer peak season in July and August. In particular, it will be adding 168 flights to Japan, which has emerged as a reasonably priced getaway location for Koreans owing to a weak yen.

Jin Air announced a discount of up to 18% for customers reserving round-trip flights to and from Incheon and Kitakyushu. Additionally, the airline will provide 5% discount coupons that can be used when purchasing duty-free products from Don Quijote, a popular general store in Japan, to all customers who purchase flights to Japan.

On the other hand, airlines are either reducing or not adding flights to China, as demand for travel to the country has decreased due to souring South Korea-China relations. As a matter of fact, according to aviation statistics from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport’s aeronautical information portal, a total of 1,206,374 passengers took flights to and from China from January to May this year, less than one-fifth of the figure for the same time period in 2019 (7,213,038 passengers).

Korean Air flights to and from Gimpo and Beijing will no longer be in operation starting Aug. 1, while flights to and from Incheon and Xiamen will no longer be in operation starting Aug. 9. Those flights will be suspended until Oct. 28, when the flight schedule for the summer season will wrap up.

Currently, Korean Air operates just 95 flights per week between South Korea and China, or roughly one-third of the 294 recorded prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in June 2019. The recovery rate for these routes has been slower than those out of Japan, which has reached 144 flights per week in comparison with 218 before the pandemic.

Asiana Airlines will also no longer be providing service between Gimpo and Beijing as of July 6 and between Incheon and Shenzhen as of July 8. Service between Incheon and Xi’an was discontinued on June 20.

Korean Air planes sit on the tarmac at Incheon International Airport. (Yonhap)

“The number of flights that would normally be operating into China hasn’t increased as expected, so the trend has been one of bumping up service for where demand is higher,” an aviation industry source commented.

Meanwhile, news of South Korean airlines temporarily suspending some of their routes to China has prompted analyses in China connecting the situation with developments in relations between Seoul and Beijing.

The government-run Global Times paraphrased Dong Xiangrong, a senior fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ National Institute of International Strategy, as saying that by implementing foreign policies with a pro-US, pro-Japanese slant, the South Korean government had incurred clear side effects in terms of weakened relations with Beijing and Moscow as well as domestic concerns over tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Dong was also quoted as saying that South Korea had become a less attractive destination for Chinese travelers and that it was unlikely to see Chinese tourists once again visiting South Korean duty free shops and tourism destinations in large numbers.

By Ko Han-sol, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]