Hosting a website in China is complex, and almost impossible for foreign companies and non-China residents. Should one consider hosting in South Korea when targeting Chinese users?
Well, it depends. South Korea has some of the most advanced IT infrastructure in the world and the internet connection speed locally is second to none. This does not mean however that access to websites hosted in Korea is extremely fast as this will depend of the international bandwidth of the specific datacenter, local internet speed of the user and the connectivity between the user ISP and the South Korean internet carrier. Furthermore, despite being a neighbor to China, South Korea is not within the Great Firewall, the system that notoriously slow down (or worse, block) access to overseas websites in China.
South Korean datacenters are also known to be very restrictive for contents hosted on their network (which would apply even if the website targets overseas visitors). We have seen cases where after adults pages were found on a website hosted at a specific Seoul datacenter, the whole server was taken down and the host had to migrate all other accounts to a different server and IP address, after the website in question was terminated.
In real life situation, South Korea would make sense for hosting websites targeting Beijing, Tianjin, Qingdao or the Northern or North-East region of China. Other conditions being the same, region south of Shanghai should get better access speed by hosting in Taiwan or Hong Kong.
SinoHosting is a web host that we recommend when it comes to hosting in South Korea. Packages are affordable, activation is done within 6 hours in most cases, and, differently from other South Korean providers, they do not require to sign documents or provide copies of passports and other identification documents prior to service activation. For more details, please visit www.sinohosting.net/web-hosting.php