There are growing signs that South Korea and China are moving to normalize bilateral economic cooperation following a significant drop in COVID-19 cases in both countries. 

According to South Korean industries on Wednesday, around 200 employees of Samsung Electronics boarded a chartered flight earlier in the day to Xian, China. They were dispatched to work in the South Korean tech giant’s first and only overseas memory chip production base in the northwestern Chinese city. 

This comes after Seoul and Beijing agreed to exempt businesspeople of the two countries from coronavirus-related quarantine rules. 

Experts in China predict the fast-track policy for entrepreneurs will begin to apply to key areas of bilateral economic exchange, such as autos, chemistry, electronics and machinery, and help restore two-way trade. 

Amid the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, South Korea’s exports to China, its biggest trade partner, plunged 17 percent in the first 20 days of April from the same period last year.