A South Korean health official sprays disinfectant in front of a hospital in Cheongdo county near the city of Daegu on Friday. Photo: AFP

Bilateral trade between China and South Korea may witness a dive of 15 percent in February and 10 percent in January compared with last year, experts warned amid the increasingly grim situation of the novel coronavirus pneumonia, or COVID-19 outbreak in South Korea.

Li Tianguo, assistant research fellow with the National Institute of International Strategy (NIIS) of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, made the predictions to the Global Times on Monday.

While China is making progress in curing infected patients as it reinforced epidemic prevention and control measures across the country, the worsen situation in its neighbor South Korea will harm China's economy which will be reflected in less bilateral investment, slower two-way flow of tourists and declining bilateral trade, said Zhao Jinping, former head of foreign economic research department at the Development Research Center of the State Council. 

He predicted the decline of South Korea's annual exports to China will be larger than that of the bilateral trade drop. 

Due to people exchange restrictions, two-way direct investment and other economic cooperation will be impacted, with some industrial and economic cooperation projects have been forced to suspend, Li said.

"A minister meeting between China and South Korea was scheduled in March to discuss bilateral industrial cooperation in Seoul, but whether it can be held on time is a problem," Li said, noting that another meeting for jointly fighting smog initially scheduled in early March has already been postponed.

South Korea's exports to China plunged 3.7 percent in the first 20 days of February from the same period last year, South Korea's official customs data showed on Friday.

Electronics, autos, mechanical parts, commodity chemicals are the main products that South Korea sells to China with electronics accounting for a large amount, experts noted. 

Samsung Electronics resumed operations for its handset factory based in Gumi, Seoul on Monday after it was temporarily shut down over the weekend after one employee was confirmed of the virus infection, according to industry media ZDNet. 

Samsung told the Global Times it has gradually resumed productions in all of its 18 factories in China as of Monday. 

"If South Korea can contain the virus soon, it will be significant to stabilize the Asia's economy," Zhao noted, citing the country accounts for about 6.2 percent of regional GDP and boasts as one of the manufacturing hubs in Asia. 

Having the highest number of coronavirus cases out of China, officials in South Korea raised alert level to the "highest" while South Korea has confirmed 833 as of the press time.