Two South Korean NGOs shuttered their representative offices in China in recent months, according to information on the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) website. This makes for a total of nine foreign NGOs that registered a representative office in China after the Foreign NGO Law went into effect in January 2017 and then subsequently de-registered those offices.
The two latest de-registrations are part of a small but noticeable de-registration trend in 2019; five foreign NGOs de-registered representative offices between late March and mid-June of this year. The latest two foreign NGOs to de-register are the South Korea Northeast Asia Foundation For Education And Culture (韩国东北亚教育文化协力财团) and the Central Assembly of the Aquaculture Collaboration Association (韩国水产业协同组合中央会), both of which closed their representative offices in August.
The National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives a trade organization, de-registered its Beijing office on August 22, 2019. According to the MPS website, the South Korean NGO had focused on market research and promoted business contacts for aquatic-related products. It had been allowed to operate in Beijing, Gansu, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, Jilin, Liaoning, Ningxia, Qinghai, and Tianjin provinces since its registration in June 2017. The Beijing Commission of Commerce was its Professional Supervisory Unit (PSU).
The South Korea Northeast Asia Foundation for Education and Culture de-registered its representative office in Jilin province on August 27, 2019, after nearly two years of operation. It had provided educational funding and resources to Yanbian University of Science and Technology. The province’s Department of Education was its PSU.
Only two foreign NGOs de-registered their representative offices during the first two years of the Foreign NGO Law’s implementation. But in the first eight months of 2019, seven foreign NGOs closed their representative offices. A full list of de-registered representative offices, along with information about their previous operations in China, can be found here.
Correction: This article previously stated that the Central Assembly of the Aquaculture Collaboration Association, a trade organization, de-registered its representative office in Shanghai on August 22, 2019. Instead, it was the Beijing office of the same organization that de-registered. In addition, we have changed all references to this organization to the name “National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives.”