Presidential office takes credit for 'partial lifting' of China's hallyu ban

President Yoon Suk-yeol and Chinese leader Xi Jinping shake hands during a summit held at a hotel in Bali, Indonesia on Nov. 15, on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit. Yonhap By Kang Hyun-kyung Award-winning filmmaker Hong Sang-soo's 2018 movie, “Hotel by the River,” which revolves around a poet who is visited by his two sons while staying in a hotel, has been released on the Chinese over-the-top (OTT) service, Tencent Video, starting from Nov. 20. The move has raised hopes among Korean content makers of a partial lifting of the Chinese government's hallyu ban, which was imposed in 2017 following South Korea's deployment of a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile battery. “Hotel by the River” is the first Korean movie to be made available on any major OTT service in China since 2017, according to experts familiar with the Chinese market. The news excited the presidential office. The presidential office said on Tuesday that the release of the Korean film on the Chinese OTT service is a follow-up measure to President Yoon Suk-yeol's summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, held on Nov. 15 on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia. “A Korean film has been aired recently on a Chinese OTT after the six-year ban,” Kim Eun-hye, senior presidential secretary for press affairs, told reporters. “We hope that this small gesture will lead to big, meaningful progress in the future of the bilateral relations of the two countries since the recent summit.” Kim reiterated Yoon's remarks during the summit with Xi to stress that the Chinese OTT's release of the Korean movie is the result of the meeting between the two leaders. “During the summit, which was held nearly three years after the previous one, President Yoon underscored the importance of cultural and people-to-people exchanges between the two countries. The president also stressed the need for growing interactions between the younger generations of the two countries. President Xi concurred with the view,” she said. “China responded favorably to Korea with the Chinese OTT releasing the Korean movie.” Kim quoted the Chinese leader as saying that cultural exchanges should be delinked from geopolitical issues. According to Kim, Xi said cultural exchanges between the two nations ― which have been suspended following China's economic retaliation to the THAAD deployment in South Korea ― negatively impacted the friendship between the people of the two countries. The Chinese leader viewed that the suspension of cultural exchanges does not help either side and expressed his hope that the two nations will work toward the full resumption of cultural exchanges as they were before the hallyu ban, Kim said. However, it remains uncertain whether the Korean movie being made available on Tencent Video is an actual reflection of the lifting of the hallyu ban in China. In 2020, the Korean comedy film “Oh! My Gran” was released in Chinese cinemas. It raised the hopes of those in the hallyu industry, who took it a sign that the Chinese government was lifting the hallyu ban then. But no other Korean movie has been screened in China since.