Officials from a South Korean city have been barred from Asia’s biggest beer festival as the Chinese city which stages the event cancels an exchange trip amid a row between the two countries over Seoul’s deployment of US missiles.

The officials from Daegu agreed not to attend the month-long Qingdao Beer Festival, which starts on Monday, after they were told by their counterparts in China that it would be inappropriate.

City chiefs in Qingdao, in China’s eastern Shandong province, have also said they will not be making an exchange visit to South Korea to attend Daegu’s annual beer and fried chicken festival.

The bust-up appears to have fermented following a diplomatic outcry from Beijing over Seoul’s decision to deploy a US anti-missile defence system to counter threats from North Korea.

The announcement by South Korea and the United States earlier this month that a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) unit would be set up has drawn protests from Beijing that it would destabilise regional security.

The diplomatic fall-out now seems to have impacted a local-level boozy exchange trip, or what Chinese state media has called a “bilateral economic engagement” between the two cities.

“We have called Daegu city government and told them we will not be sending any officials for fried chicken and beer,” a Qingdao official told The Telegraph.