Shinsegae Department Store, a major South Korean department store, said Thursday it will open a shop on China's largest online shopping mall next week in an effort to cope with the decrease in the number of Chinese tourists amid a diplomatic row over the deployment of a US missile defense system here.

The department store said its cosmetics and fashion items will be available on Tmall from Sunday. It plans to sell more various items, including home appliances and products for children, within this year.

Tmall is an online shopping platform operated by China's Alibaba Group that had 800 million visitors last year, according to Shinsegae Department Store.

The move came amid a steep fall in the number of Chinese tourists to South Korea after Beijing put a ban on selling Korea-bound trips from mid-March in protest of Seoul's deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery on its soil.

The number of inbound Chinese visitors in April dropped 66.6 percent compared to the same period last year, according to the Korea Tourism Organization.

The purchase of Korean products by Chinese nationals through online shopping malls, meanwhile, increased 5.84 percent on-quarter in the January-March period, according to data by the Statistics Korea. (Yonhap)