China fires broadsides at South Korea’s Lotte group for providing land to host anti-missile system

A South Korean conglomerate has landed itself in hot water in China after it agreed to provide land to host a US-backed missile shield system that Beijing has labelled a strategic threat to its national security.

Lotte Group, the fifth-largest conglomerate in South Korea and one of the country’s major foreign retail operators in China, said on Wednesday its Chinese website has suffered a disruption that could be a cyberattack by unidentified Chinese hackers, South Korea’s news agency Yonhap reported.

Attempts to visit Lotte’s Chinese website have failed since Tuesday afternoon, meeting only a message saying that the server could not find the webpage.

A Lotte official told Yonhap that the disruption was caused by a virus planted by hackers, citing analysis by computer security experts.

The Asian retail giant said last month that it had closed three retail stores in China. It also faced a series of regulatory investigations into its operations in China late last year. On Monday, after it announced its decision, Lotte said that it was concerned about further business fallout caused by the tensions between the two nations.