South Korea is operating special flights for business people with factories in foreign countries as a breakdown of the world’s visa and travel systems caused by coronavirus wreaks havoc on multinational operations.
At least five flights have been dispatched since late March, taking hundreds of engineers and executives to critical manufacturing facilities in China, Vietnam and eastern Europe owned by tech companies Samsung and LG as well as carmaker Hyundai and their suppliers.
Park Ki-young, deputy trade minister, told the Financial Times: “Our businessmen with overseas plants are in trouble . . . We have seen more demand for such flights than we expected, so we plan to continue to run these operations until the pandemic is brought under control.”