On October 31, Seoul and Beijing agreed to end a year-long dispute over the deployment of a U.S. THAAD battery in South Korea. Following South Korea’s decision to deploy the missile defense system, China targeted ROK retail, tourism, cosmetics, and entertainment industries that rely heavily on the Chinese market and customers.

“Both sides shared the view that the strengthening of exchange and cooperation between Korea and China serves their common interests and agreed to expeditiously bring exchange and cooperation in all areas back on a normal development track,” South Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

As part of the agreement, South Korean President Moon Jae-in will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries in Vietnam on November 10-11. South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha reassured Chinese officials a day earlier that that despite the THAAD deployment, South Korea had no intention of joining the United States’ efforts to build a region-wide missile-defense system aimed at countering China’s expansion of its military capabilities, would not accept any additional THAAD batteries, and would not enter any trilateral military alliance with the United States and Japan.