From Borderland to Border

This chapter explores the transformation of Qing-Chosŏn political relations and territorial boundaries by focusing on the joint investigation of the Tumen riverhead in the 1880s. By the nineteenth century, ginseng had disappeared in Manchuria as well as in the Qing-Chosŏn boundary. As the Qing decided to open the northeast to Chinese farmers in order to defend against foreign aggressions, the flow of Chinese immigration came to reach the Chosŏn boundary. Due to the competition for land, the uninhabited buffer zone at the boundary was no longer maintained, and the two neighbors had to solve the ambiguity of their territorial limits. The borderland that the Qing and the Chosŏn had shared was replaced by the border.