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

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.