Relations are warming between Beijing and Seoul under South Korea's left-leaning president, Lee Jae Myung.
A high-profile trip to Beijing last weekend was the second meeting between Mr Lee and Chinese President Xi Jinping in less than three months.
The pair took smiley selfies together on a Chinese Xiaomi smartphone gifted to Mr Lee at their last meeting.
The summit raised hopes in South Korea that improved ties would lead to the lifting of wide-ranging restrictions on the country's pop culture in China.
Beijing imposed the de facto ban in 2016 after the US announced it would deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system to South Korea. The THAAD is aimed at defending the country from China's ally North Korea.
Since then, South Korean artists have been barred from lucrative tours in China.
Chinese authorities imposed limits on the screening of South Korean films and of its celebrities appearing in advertisements or other broadcasts.
The relationship between the East Asian neighbours further deteriorated under right-wing president Yoon Suk Yeol, who now faces a raft of criminal charges after he briefly imposed martial law in 2024.
Yet over the weekend, the governments of Mr Lee and Mr Xi signed US$44 million ($65.8 million) worth of trade deals and dozens of memorandums of understandings.
On Chinese social media platform Weibo, one user asked: "Does this mean the Korean Wave can come back into China?"
Hallyu as successful soft diplomacy
The Korean Wave, or hallyu, refers to the stratospheric rise in global popularity of Korean popular culture since the 1990s — promoted by an explicit soft power strategy from Seoul.
Its success is undeniable.
Squid Game is Netflix's most-streamed non-English language series of all time.
The Korean film Parasite became the first foreign-language film to win Best Picture at the Oscars in 2020.
Korean girl group Blackpink are the most-streamed female band on Spotify.
"Its role in reshaping global perceptions of South Korea has been immense," said Sarah Keith, a media lecturer and expert on K-pop at Macquarie University.
"K-pop and K-drama are both powerful instruments of soft power, and may make Chinese consumers more likely to prefer Korean products," Dr Keith said.
"K-pop idols are strong promoters for many types of Korean goods, whether fashion, beauty, food, or tourism."
The Beijing office of the Korea Creative Content Agency, a government body associated with South Korea's cultural ministry, reported last year that "in China, no Korean dramas have aired since March 2023".
"Since early 2024, even the airing of Chinese remakes of Korean dramas has been implicitly restricted," it said.
Still, Chinese consumers are able to access Korean dramas, film and music online by using a VPN.
The 2025 Overseas Hallyu Survey found the average Chinese person surveyed was spending more than 15 hours a month consuming Korean cultural products — around three times longer than respondents in Japan.
The survey, conducted annually by the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange, found about a quarter of Chinese respondents had seen a Korean film in the past month.
Ban to be 'resolved gradually', says Lee
After the weekend's leaders' summit in Beijing, Korean officials said China maintained no such ban exists.
"China maintains that it does not recognise the policy as formally existing," Korean national security advisor Wi Sung-lac told reporters, as quoted by The Korea Times.
"In today's dialogue, there were comments questioning whether it was even necessary to debate its existence," he said.
"That makes it difficult to characterise the situation as entering a clear lifting phase."
Instead, the two countries agreed to less politically contested cultural exchanges, including in sport.
President Lee was quoted by Korean media as saying the issue would be "resolved gradually, step by step".
According to Mr Lee, his Chinese counterpart, Mr Xi, likened the situation to the process of ice melting or ripe fruit falling from a tree.
And there have already been signs of thawing.
Despite a number of K-pop concerts being cancelled in China last year, the Korean hip hop group Homies managed to play a concert in the Chinese city of Wuhan in April.
After a bilateral summit in November, Kim Young-bae from South Korea's ruling Democratic Party said Mr Xi "responded positively" to the idea of a major K-pop performance taking place in Beijing.
State media reported the top destination on the Chinese travel booking site Qunar at the beginning of 2026 was Seoul.
Macquarie University's Dr Keith said a full lift of the Hallyu ban would be a major domestic political victory for Mr Lee.
It would boost economic confidence in South Korea, especially in sectors particularly reliant on China such as the semiconductor industry, she said.
"Popular culture, easily dismissed as trivial, has real political significance," she said.
