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Since 2008, strategic partnerships have been established between China and Korea. From 2009 to 2019, the bilateral relationship kept a generally stable rate of development with conflicts and uncertainties. It is necessary to study national image construction in the respective mainstream media of the two countries. The present study analyzed Korea-related reports (N = 744) in the People’s Daily from 2009 to 2019, aiming to examine the Korean national image framing under Fairclough’s three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework: “whatness,” “how,” and “whyness.” The results shed light on what the Korean national image in the People’s Daily was and how and why it was framed in that way. This study provided some implications for readers to further recognize the role that media play in constructing a particular image of one country and a frame for researchers to study foreign national image framing in one of China’s mainstream newspapers.