Seoul — South Korea’s tourist industry has been hammered by China’s boycott over the deployment of the US missile defence system, with visitor numbers from the Asian giant plummeting 40% in March, statistics show. Beijing banned Chinese tour groups from visiting the South from March 15 in a spat over the US terminal high-altitude area defence (THAAD) system. Washington and Seoul say it is for purely defensive purposes, but Beijing fears it could undermine its own nuclear deterrent and has reacted with fury, imposing a series of measures seen as economic retaliation. Normally more than half of tourists to the South are from China, but little more than 360,000 visited last month, compared to just more than 600,000 a year. Total visitor numbers fell 11.2% year on year to 1.23-million, the state Korea Tourism Organisation (KTO) said.
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