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Scottish Centre for Korean Studies

 Distinguished Lecture Series

Venue: Lecture Theatre B, 40 George Square, Edinburgh

Hunger on China’s Korean Periphery: Yanbian in the Great Leap Forward, 1958-1962

Dr Adam Cathcart

(University of Leeds)

Abstract: The research in this presentation seeks to document the impacts of the Great Leap Forward in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in northeast China. It does so using publications from local governments and archives in Yanji, Changchun, and Wangqing, and leverages recent scholarly advances in the history of the region. In so doing, the research explores the linkage of general Great Leap Forward literature to a specific region. Should scholars place the PRC Yanbian Korean Autonomous Region within the same scope of harshness and depravation as other parts of China during the Great Leap? This research attempts to balance and bring into dialogue the debate amongst Sinologists about the impact of Maoism while leveraging local sources or PRC sources on a relatively neglected era in the study of the Korean minority in China. Engagement with the work of Jaeeun Kim, Hyun Ok Park, and Dong Jo Shin, allows for the combination of merging of Korean Studies discourse with questions and data rooted in more conventional food- and economy oriented studies of the Mao era.

Bio: Adam Cathcart is associate professor of East Asian history at the University of Leeds. His most recent book, Decoding the Sino-North Korean Borderlands, was published by Amsterdam University Press. He is currently writing up a new monograph on China-North Korea relations from 2010-2020. Adam Cathcart's recent peer-reviewed articles investigate early PRC grain markets (Chinese Historical Review), the US/UN occupation of DPRK (North Korean Review), and the careers of Japanese geographers in Korea, Inner Mongolia, and Manchuria (Journal of Historical Geography, with Robert Winstanley-Chesters). He is the editor of an online scholarly collective (Sino-NK), supervises a cohort of seven PhD researchers, and runs modules at Leeds about the Korean War, Maoist China, and mid-20th century Japan.

The event is free, and registration is not required.