Asia-Pacific shift as Seoul and Beijing deepen cultural and economic ties

Seoul and Beijing accelerated bilateral engagement on Saturday when their leaders met on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Gyeongju. President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea and President Xi Jinping of China signed a new five-year currency swap worth about 70 trillion won between their central banks, and agreed six memorandums of understanding covering economic cooperation, agriculture and services trade. This financial pact mirrors one that expired last month and signals a stronger push by both Seoul and Beijing for deeper economic synchronisation.

At the same time, the two administrations flagged potential restoration of cultural exchange channels that were effectively shut down more than a decade ago. China’s informal ban on South Korean entertainment—spanning K-pop, television dramas and film—was imposed following Seoul’s deployment of a U. S. missile defences system, which Beijing viewed as a strategic threat. At the summit, Lee and Xi agreed on the need to expand cultural cooperation, though Lee’s office cautioned that the dialogue reflected “courtesy comments” rather than final decisions.

Analysts describe the summit as a signal of warming relations after years of tactical distancing around security issues. Lee pressed for China’s constructive involvement in facilitating dialogue with North Korea, emphasising that high-level exchanges between Pyongyang and Beijing had ramped up. Xi reaffirmed China’s policy of strategic consistency and pledged deeper communication with Seoul. In parallel, the Korean and Chinese law-enforcement authorities signed an MOU to combat transnational voice-phishing and online scam crimes. Other MOUs addressed cooperation in the silver industry, innovative start-ups and agricultural exports from South Korea to China, reinforcing the emphasis on citizen-facing and practical cooperation.

Still, important caveats remain. While the swap agreement and MOUs represent tangible results, they come against a backdrop of prominent domestic dissent in South Korea. Thousands of protesters rallied in Seoul ahead of the summit, chanting anti-China slogans and highlighting a rising climate of nationalist sentiment. The South Korean government has acknowledged that such unrest risks undermining its diplomatic efforts and international standing. On the cultural front, though the possibility of lifting the ban on Korean content in China was raised, officials stressed that legal and procedural constraints remain in place and the matter is “premature” to reinterpret as a full reopening.

Commercially, the new swap line aims to bolster market stability for both nations amid global economic uncertainty and an intensifying U. S.–China rivalry. For cultural industries in South Korea—home to major firms such as Hybe, SM Entertainment and CJ ENM—the prospect of access to China’s vast audience is tantalising but still uncertain. For Beijing, deeper cultural ties with Seoul could ease past tensions and bolster the role of cultural-and-creative industries in economic growth, as alluded to in the summit’s wider Asia-Pacific framework which emphasises the importance of such sectors alongside digital transformation and artificial intelligence.