Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Northeast Asia had enjoyed phenomenal growth in intra-regional travel. In 2019, the share of inbound visitors from other Northeast Asian countries ranged from 11 percent in the Russian Federation, 35 percent in China, 48 percent in Japan, 56 percent in the Republic of Korea to 76 percent in Mongolia.
Such magnitude of people-to-people exchanges signifies the high level of interconnection and interdependence among the countries. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Northeast Asia, people-to-people exchange was abruptly halted as countries started closing borders and imposing travel bans due, in part, to a lack of bilateral and multilateral coordination.
The complete…