Peaceful Invasion
The Jeju Special Self-governing Province announced that Chinese landowners are in possession of 50.2 percent of the island that is owned by non-Koreans. Americans were the largest owners among foreigners until early last year, but the Chinese took their place in the first half of 2014. The area of the land owned by the latter totaled 8.26 square kilometers as of the end of the first quarter of this year, in contrast to the former’s at 3.68 square kilometers.
At the end of March this year, the Chinese had 1,552 buildings (235,867 square meters in area) in Jeju, equivalent to 73 percent of the 2,116 total buildings (312,800 square meters) owned by foreigners there. Most of the Chinese buildings are lodging facilities. In total, 1,318 new buildings (199,890 square meters) have been built for that purpose in Jeju since 2010, and 95 percent of them (1,257 buildings, 191,179 square meters) are owned by Chinese.
This is because a lot of Chinese are seeking to obtain Korean nationality by means of real estate investment. Until the first quarter of this year, 1,101 resident visas have been issued in return for a real estate investment of 1,054.785 billion won (US$939 million) in the island, and 98.5 percent of the visas have gone to Chinese.
Their investment, however, has not been enough to revitalize the regional economy. At present, foreign-invested companies are moving ahead with 19 projects in Jeju, and 15 of them are led by China and Hong Kong. Still, most of them are for resort development for tourists from China.