How does one write a history about a place and people that were incessantly talked about in officialdom as part of multiple, conflicting colonization and nationalist projects? This talk examines approaches to borderland history in the Tumen valley, part of which included the territory of the Russian Maritime Province, and its population of Koreans.  Drawing from her book Sovereignty Experiments (Cornell University Press), Professor Park discusses the migration of Koreans to the Tumen valley and the attempts by officials of Chosŏn Korea, Qing China, and tsarist Russia to categorize and claim these migrants.  The talk presents an alternative view of borderland history in which the Russian Far East becomes part of broader East Asian history and overturns conventional narratives of far eastern colonization and minoritization of Koreans.

More information here.