The editors of Decoding the Sino-North Korean Borderlands write that they have “a high-order goal” – which is to capture “the full breadth of interactions, potential, disconnection, and unresolved history” (p. 17) of the thousand-mile border region where China meets the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea). They identify a variety of research questions, including the nature of social relations in the border regions, Sino-DPRK interstate relations, North Korean migration patterns, the social and national identities of ethnic Koreans living in border areas, changes in priorities of individuals, the Chinese state and the North Korean state over time, and understandings of socialist solidarity. The editors aim to provide “a historical element” capable of “achieving something new” as well as to introduce “data, theories, and perspectives from various sources” (p. 17), as well as various research methods.
The book comprises 18 chapters, an introduction and an afterword, written by 21 different authors. The book contains contributions both from experienced scholars and doctoral students, specialists and non-specialists in China and Korea, former diplomats and policy analysts.
As with all edited books, some chapters succeed better than others. Chapter eight, by Yuanchong Wang, subtitled “Fenghuang Gate and the emergence of the modern Sino-Korean borderline, 1636–1876,” provides the standout contribution of this book; it shows how and why both the empirics and the concept of the border between China and Korea changed over time. Dong Jo Shin's chapter nine on China's language policy in Yanbian, the Korean-speaking region in Jilin designated by the Chinese government as an autonomous prefecture, Adam Cathcart's critique of the mythologizing of Kim Il Sung's revolutionary exploits in China in chapter seven and Ed Pulford's ethnographic presentation of Korean identities in northeast China in chapter 18 provide persuasive, professional analysis as well as empirical novelty. What these chapters have in common is intellectual authority; they are founded in profound, demonstrable knowledge of their subject matter, careful scholarship and analytical precision.
The book professes an interdisciplinary approach; this does not entail reflective epistemological engagement across disciplinary boundaries but is instead a signpost to the fact that contributors have little in common apart from that of generalized interest in the topic of the Sino-Korean border. This approach has its dangers, in that contributors interested in the topic but unfamiliar with the research context can be drawn into analytical and empirical errors. Chapter two by Elisabeth Leake, for example, asserts that “Western observers… [are] trying to place new pressure on China to regulate” the Sino-North Korean border and that the Sino-North Korean border “takes the form … of a stark ideological and political divide within international relations” (p. 55). These comments misunderstand and, therefore, provide an inaccurate representation and misanalysis of the China–DPRK border region, which remains an international political backwater. The region has excited negligible foreign interference since the Korean War ended in 1953, largely because China and the DPRK are both highly authoritarian states and have had the means and capacity to prevent any such interference.
The book is not based around a central argument, thesis or systematic analytical framework; instead, it depends on the concept of borderlands as the singular means of providing intellectual coherence. The introduction, chapter one and chapter two, provide a signposting of theoretical and conceptual direction but the concept of borderlands is never unpacked and a demonstration of how the concept could support the analytical intent of the editors is not provided. If anything, for a book that emphasizes new research directions, its conceptual underpinnings are founded on very conventional, perhaps self-evident propositions. Chapter one provides the now commonplace notion of the border as a meeting place of two “sovereign jurisdictions,” while chapter two narrows what could have been a rather exciting discussion of borderlands as an heuristic concept to the rather dated and analytically unproductive Westphalian understanding that the Sino-North Korean “border's importance stems from its role demarcating two national spaces” and as “a space where [China and the DPRK] can regulate and oversee their citizens’ mobility” (p. 55).
Specialist researchers can learn a lot from those chapters in this volume that demonstrate high-quality research. They will also benefit from the bibliographical references appended to each chapter, including extensive Chinese sources. As a whole, however, it is difficult to see the book finding a ready audience in either a disciplinary location, or in area studies research and teaching. The book does not aim to provide anything new to those engaged theoretically in research on borders and borderlands, and it is too intellectually uneven to appeal to scholars engaging in research on China or the DPRK, or to be useful as a teaching aid on standard China or Korean studies courses.
