hankyoreh

Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre, a concert venue for the Eastman Philharmonia ensemble. (Eastman School of Music)

Following media reports that an American university orchestra cancelled a performance in China after South Korean citizens in the orchestra were unable to get visas to China, the South Korean government learned on Oct. 31 that the Koreans in question had not even applied for Chinese visas. 

The AP reported on Thursday that Jamal Rossi, dean of the Eastman School of Music, at the University of Rochester in New York, had canceled the Eastman Philharmonia’s concert in China and was delaying the tour until all the orchestra members were able to go. Several South Korean newspapers quoted this information in reports of their own. 

According to these reports, the visas of the three Korean orchestra members were rejected because of a ban on South Korean performances that China had imposed following the deployment of the US’ THAAD missile defense system in South Korea in 2016. 

American news media played up the visa rejection as an extension of the ongoing US-China conflict into the arenas of culture and sports. The Chinese authorities recently cancelled broadcasts of NBA matches after the owner of the Houston Rockets basketball team tweeted his support for the Hong Kong protests. 

But when South Korean diplomats looked into the situation, they learned that none of the participants in the concert, including the Koreans, had applied for Chinese visas yet. In other words, it’s not true that the American orchestra members received their Chinese visas while Korean members were denied them.

One possible explanation is that the agency that the orchestra hired to handle the technical preparations for its Chinese concert may have assumed that the Koreans were unlikely to receive visas, given previous examples of China’s retaliation for the THAAD deployment.

There have been instances in which China blocked performances by Korean artists. In 2017, Korean soprano Sumi Jo had to cancel a concert in China after her visa application was rejected.

Another possibility is that the agency asked a Chinese consulate in the US about the possibility of getting visas for the Korean orchestra members and was told that the visas could not be issued. But since China’s ban on Korean cultural content was conducted on an informal basis, it’s unlikely that a consulate would have said that a visa application would be denied on record.

During a Chinese Foreign Ministry press conference on Oct. 30, Spokesperson Geng Shuang was asked about the refusal of visas to the Korean members of the Eastman Philharmonia. With the caveat that he was “not aware of the situation,” Shuang explained that “in 2018, about 9.5 million visits were made between China and the ROK [South Korea].” “If China refuses to issue visas due to the THAAD issue as some claim,” Geng continued, “how could those several million people have made it to China?”

By Park Min-hee, staff reporter

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