Next Thursday marks the 25th anniversary of formal China-South Korea diplomatic relations, and researchers say the economic relationship between the two countries has grown to 33 times as large as it was a quarter century ago.

The Korea Economic Research Institute(KERI) says trade volume between China and South Korea was six-point-37 billion U.S. dollars in 1992. By last year, that volume had swelled to 211-point-four billion dollars. Bilateral trade has grown 15-point-seven percent on average a year.

China overtook the United States in 2003 as South Korea's largest trade partner. South Korea also invested nearly five billion dollars in China last year alone to become its third largest investor after Hong Kong and Singapore.