SEOUL: South Korea has stopped issuing new visas or renewals for Chinese teachers at Beijing’s Confucius Institutes in the country, an official and a report said Wednesday (Feb 1), with tensions growing over a controversial US missile system.
Hundreds of Confucius Institutes around the world promote Chinese traditional culture and language as part of Beijing’s soft power strategy. They have provoked controversy over issues of academic freedom at some Western universities.
The state-run network has dozens of branches in South Korea in partnership with local colleges.
But Seoul and Beijing are in an increasingly heated dispute over a plan to deploy the powerful US anti-missile system THAAD to the South against threats from nuclear-armed North Korea.
China fears it will undermine its own ballistic capabilities and has introduced a series of measures seen by Seoul as economic retaliation, including effectively barring K-pop stars from performing on the mainland.
