Both from an international political perspective and an economic/investment perspective, an interesting evolving relationship.
Courtship of Beijing and Seoul: A New Twist for an Old Bond
By JAMES BROOKE
Published: February 26, 2004
SEOUL, South Korea, Feb. 25 — Mao Zedong once declared that China and North Korea were "as close as lips and teeth." But as talks get under way in Beijing over North Korea's nuclear weapons program, the focus of China's affections has shifted.
While Chinese troops saved North Korea from military defeat half a century ago, the Koreans that modern Chinese identify with are in the south. K-pop music, South Korean boyfriends and tourist excursions to Seoul are all the rage in Beijing and Shanghai.
In turn, South Korea, a decade after opening diplomatic ties with China, is in the throes of China-mania. Convinced that China is Asia's power of the future, South Koreans are throwing themselves into Chinese study, travel and investment.
Today, for example, 30,000 South Koreans study in China, the largest group of foreign students there.
"When Chinese-language proficiency tests were given worldwide last year, 50 percent of the passing students were from Korea," said Zhang Jifang, the New China News Agency's bureau chief here. Near the bureau in Seoul, Beijing is building a Chinese Cultural Center, one of the largest in the world.
Six South Korean cities now have direct flights to Shanghai, while a traveler in Seoul has a choice of direct flights to 24 Chinese cities.
On the wings of this human exchange, about three million people last year, South Korea's exports to China jumped 50 percent last year, and South Korea's annual flow of investment to China hit $2.5 billion, more than triple South Korea's investment in the United States. Last year, nearly half of South Korea's foreign investment went to China.
Chasing after low labor costs and an enormous and rapidly expanding market, South Korean investors were to a great extent joining in a global flood of investment money to China, a flow that leaves some South Koreans nervous. Since 2000, the annual flow of new foreign investment into South Korea has fallen by 58 percent, hitting $6.5 billion last year.
Last year, China displaced Japan as the biggest trader in Northeast Asia, with $851 billion in regional trade. Trade between China and South Korea reached $50 billion last year, about eight times the level of a decade ago.
Historically, Koreans have viewed China as a source of culture as well as commerce, adopting Confucianism and Chinese characters, among other things. On the other hand, the relationship of vassal state to China was often oppressive.
"It is ingrained in the Korean psyche that China is the big brother," said Samuel Koo, president of Arirang TV, South Korea's English-language broadcaster. "But Chinese-Korean relations were far from being an unmitigated love affair. "We used to ship to them tens of thousands of virgins every year," as a tribute hundreds of years ago.
In contrast, Japan was often seen as a violent threat, invading numerous times before the early 20th-century colonization. Aidan Foster-Carter, a Korea expert at Leeds University in Britain, calls South Korea's contemporary infatuation with China "penultimate oppressor love."
Many Koreans wonder how they will cope with a market-oriented China. Some of China's biggest investments are in areas where South Korea is currently king — shipbuilding, semiconductors and cars.
And in what would be China's first purchase of an overseas carmaker, a state-owned conglomerate, China National Blue Star Group, is preparing to buy Ssangyong Motor, South Korea's fourth-largest car company. In addition to the purchase price, the Chinese have promised to invest $1 billion in the company. But South Korean workers seem troubled by the idea of working for a Chinese boss, and the carmaker's labor unions here have carried out half-day shutdowns in protest.
nytimes.com
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