Lotte Group appears to be in dire efforts to soothe Chinese customers amid an escalating diplomatic spat over South Korea’s decision to deploy the US anti-missile system at property formerly owned by the retail giant.

In a recent move, Lotte Department Store has displayed printed messages outside of its branches in Myeongdong and Jamsil that read “We understand you. So we are waiting for you.” The messages written in Chinese are also being displayed at 7-Eleven stores, its convenience store chain, across the country.

The rare display of messages courting Chinese customers is to show the group‘s sincerity to Chinese customers, the retail giant’s major customers.

“Our hope is to convey sincerity to our Chinese customers,” said a spokesman at Lotte Shopping. Although the number of Chinese tourists visiting Lotte has nearly halved, we will try to tell them we are here for them.”

The company plans to expand the campaign to several more Lotte subsidiaries in order to expose the message to more Chinese travelers to Korea, he said.

The Chinese government banned tour companies on selling any South Korean-related programs starting from March 15. As the Chinese government have taken incremental measures, the Chinese public has also turned their backs on Korea. More than 3,000 Chinese tourists refused to leave their cruise ship at Jeju Island on March 11 in a protest against the THAAD deployment.

China’s boycott of Lotte products have intensified since the group finalized a land swap with the Korean government last month, for deployment of the THAAD system in Seongju, North Gyeongsang Province, which was owned by Lotte.

Since Chinese travelers to Seoul account for about 80 percent of the total sales of Lotte Duty Free in the Sogong-dong branch, the company is paying more efforts to the Chinese visitors.

At a shareholders’ meeting last Friday, Lotte Shopping, the parent company of the supermarket business, decided to funnel emergency funds worth about 360 billion won for Lotte Mart China in order to maintain its business in the country.

As of the day, 90 out of 99 Lotte Mart branches in China decided to shut down temporarily for an unknown period in response to the growing anti-Lotte sentiment and government pressures there.

Lotte’s chief is also aggressively appealing to Chinese consumers. Chairman Shin Dong-bin told the Wall Street Journal on Friday that he loves China and hopes to continue doing business in China, calling it the land of his ancestors.

Lotte later said the chairman was referring to his surname, Shin, which originated from Shin Kyung, the progenitor of his clan, who came from China to Korea.

By Song Su-hyun (song@heraldcorp.com)