South Korean students to receive visa waivers to Beijing
In an era when convenience is everything, the anachronistic visa must go. Despite their geographical proximity and long shared history, it's taken a while for China and Korea to realize that travel between the two countries needs to become easier.
Seoul and Beijing are in talks -- hopefully to be concluded by the end of the year -- to waive visas for teenaged Korean students on school trips to Beijing as part of a "program to promote tourism," reported the Korea Times. The program is expected to start sometime next year.
If the waiver goes through, then it will be a fair, albeit delayed, quid pro quo: Chinese students traveled to Korea in 2007 without visas through a similar agreement.
South Korea already grants visa-free entry to 50 different nationalities, including Taiwanese, Japanese, and Indonesians, while Koreans can travel to up to 52 different countries without a visa, including the aforementioned countries.
And while the agreement currently being discussed is definitely a good start, if promoting tourism is the deal, then limiting the waiver to teenaged students is not going to cut it.
Baby steps are fine, but what about the rest of us?
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