Note on Places and Terms

This book is a transnational history of a people and place, located at the intersec- tion of four states and at the putative divide between East and . Writ- ing about this subject has required a careful consideration of names and terms because naming itself lay at the heart of disputes between various actors in the region. I clarify terms below and explain administrative-territorial toponyms to help the reader along.

Places The “Tumen valley” is the name I give to a region that spanned the contiguous areas of the Maritime Province in Russia, Province in , and Hamgyo˘ng Province in northern . It is a geographical designation for a region through which the Tumen River flowed. More specifically, the book focuses on the Kando region in Jilin and in the Maritime. Kando was the subject of disputes first between Choso˘n Korea and Qing China, and then Qing/Republican China and Japan. “Kando,” the Korean transliteration for “island in between” (Kanto¯ in Japanese; in Chinese), came into use in the late nineteenth century. The toponym, however, was never agreed upon. The area was referred to in general terms, such as “area near the river,” as well as “Yanji” in the Qing case and “Kando” in the Choso˘n case. The Japanese called the region “Kanto¯” and established a consular regime there in 1907. For discussion prior to 1907, I use topographical designations for the region (“left” or “north bank of the Tumen”) and privilege the Korean trans- literation of “Kando” because that is what the majority population of Koreans called it. After 1907, when the region’s districts and cities were discussed with more specificity in documents, I give both Chinese and Korean transliterations, which are still in use today. My choices should not be read as acquiescence to the nationalist and imperialist views of contemporaries. The same holds for my use of “Manchuria,” which refers to the region of bordering on Korea and Russia. The territory of Kando in the book roughly corresponds to that of present-day Yanji, Tumen, Longjing, , and Hunchun cities and Wangqing County in Yanbian Prefecture, which is also known as the Korean Autonomous Prefecture,

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People’s Republic of China. The area of Kando in the Tumen valley map, based on data from 1911, covers about 10,100 sq. mi. The boundary lines should be taken as approximate. On the Russian side, I focus on South Ussuri, the southernmost part of the Maritime Province. Ussuri, which extended from the Korean border in the south to the Khabarovsk area in the north, became part of Russia in 1860. By 1888, Ussuri had been divided into South Ussuri and Ussuri Cossack (military) lands. They formed two of nine okrug in the Maritime Province. In official documents, Ussuri and South Ussuri are often used interchangeably, and there is ambiguity about whether or not military lands are included in survey data. In part, the lack of precision stems from the fact that most civilians in Ussuri and the Maritime were concentrated in the southernmost part of South Ussuri; there was little need to distinguish between administrative units when discussing the population. My own terminology follows the language in the sources. For general discussion about the region, I use Ussuri, but for analysis of population figures, I refer to the more specific South Ussuri. South Ussuri’s names and boundaries changed over time. In the early 1900s it spanned 73,000 sq. mi., roughly equivalent to the area of present-day Primor- skii Krai. By 1913 South Ussuri’s area had decreased to 56,000 sq. mi. It had also ceased to exist as an administrative unit. In the 1920s, under the Soviet regime, most of former South Ussuri’s territory became part of a newly established Vladi- vostok okrug , which appeared to extend just beyond Lake Khanka (about 33,000 sq. mi.). It consisted of 14 raiony. In 1930, Vladivostok okrug ceased to exist, but the raiony remained. 1 Delineations for South Ussuri in the Tumen valley map are based on 1907 data and should be taken as approximate. I also expand discussion to include the Maritime Province (Primorskaia oblast’, Primore) and the Russian Far East (Dal’nyi Vostok), which, in the book, refer to the two most populous provinces of the Maritime and . Tsarist officials often spoke of their agenda in the region in general terms and used Ussuri, Maritime, Priamur, and Russian Far East interchangeably; I follow con- temporary usage. As for the Russian Far East, it is a geographical description of the region that extends from Lake Baikal to the Pacific Ocean. In adminis- trative terms, it was part of the Governor-Generalship of Eastern Siberia until 1884. It then became part of the Priamur Governor-Generalship (1884–1917), which included the Maritime, Amur, Transbaikal (until 1905), and Kamchatka (until 1909) Provinces and Sakhalin Island (after 1909). After 1917, the Maritime

1. Obzor PO za 1901–2 g, appendix 1; Obzor PO za 1913 g., appendix 1; K voprosu o migratsii Koreiskogo naseleniia ; Fridtjof Nansen, Through Siberia , trans. Arthur G. Chater (London, 1914), 333; A. I. Krushanova, ed., Administrativno-territorial’noe delenie Primorskogo kraia (Vladivostok, 1984), 10. NOTE ON PLACES AND TERMS xvii

Province and Russian Far East underwent several boundary and name changes.2 The term “Far East” is a common abbreviation of “Russian Far East,” and not a contemporary Orientalist reference for “the East” or Asia.

Terms Some readers may wonder why I use “migrant” to refer to Koreans in Russia and China because it does not convey their tendency to settle in these countries. They may also point out that it is not an accurate rendering of terms that were used at the time. In East Asian countries, officials employed various expressions, includ- ing “border trespassers,” “wanderers,” “cultivators,” and “our people”; Russian administrators described them as “people who resettle,” “foreign Koreans,” and “yellows.” I am sensitive to the ways in which these terms were used by officials— to possess, use, exclude, and punish Koreans in law and in discourse. Indeed, one of the goals of this book is precisely to place these terms in their historical con- text, and to show how disagreements over how to categorize Koreans emerged, changed, and were grappled with. I use “migrant” and “mobile” as general terms to describe Koreans who moved across borders and lived in a new country for a season or indefinite period. I also use Korean “settler,” though it should be noted that the term (and its variants) was a contemporary expression that conveyed the respective colonizing projects of the Choso˘n, Russian, Qing, and Japanese governments in the region. The term “settler” is helpful in specific cases to distin- guish those who demonstrated an intention to remain in a new place from those who intended to stay there for a season. Because Koreans moved between several countries that lay in close proximity to each other, however, the line between a “migrant” and a “settler” was frequently blurred. Finally, I use neutral terms, such as “arrivals” and “those who left.” I distinguish “migrants” from “émigrés,” a privileged, cosmopolitan group of Koreans who traveled and lived in Russia, China, and other places to con- duct anti-Japanese activities. Most migrants and settlers were economically and socially marginalized. I usually refer to Korean migrants and settlers as “Koreans.” The term denotes those who shared a common country of origin, Korea. Most of the “Russians” who migrated to the Russian Far East were “Little Russians” (Ukrainians). I use “Russian” when discussing these settlers to retain the language of contemporary documents. These designations should not be read as an acceptance of either the

2. John J. Stephan, The Russian Far East (Stanford, 1994). xviii NOTE ON PLACES AND TERMS idea of primordial ethnic identities or the ways in which identity was mobilized by Korean and Russian (Orthodox Eastern Slav) nationalists.

For readability, common English renderings for proper nouns, such as Seoul, have been used. The Library of Congress system has been used to transliter- ate Russian names and words, the McCune-Reischauer for Korean, and for Chinese. The Russian transliteration of East Asian proper nouns has been retained; when the original name can be ascertained, it is noted and transliter- ated according to one of the aforementioned systems. In Korean, Chinese, and Japanese personal names, the surname precedes the given name. The apostrophe for the soft sign in Pos’et district has been suppressed and the name rendered as Poset. All translations are the author’s unless otherwise noted. Weights and measures remain in their original form. Definitions can be found in the glossary. Dates for East Asian events and sources have been converted to the Gregorian calendar. Dates for Russian events and sources follow the Julian calendar (thir- teen days behind the Gregorian calendar) until January 31, 1918, when Russia adopted the Gregorian calendar. The notes omit subtitles and publishers of cited works. Full citations can be found in the bibliography. MAP 1. Northeast Asia MAP 2. Tumen valley SOVEREIGNTY EXPERIMENTS