Korean Nationalism - Manchuria and Gando Disputes

Manchuria and Gando Disputes

Korean nationalist historians have sometimes claimed that Manchuria (Northeast China) as well as Gando, a region bordering China, North Korea, and Russia, should be part of Korea, based on prior Koguryo control of the area. The claim for Gando (known in China as Jiandao) is said to be stronger than the claim for the whole of Manchuria, due to later Paekche presence in Gando after the fall of the Koguryo kingdom, the current area population's consisting of 1/3 ethnic Koreans, and the circumstances of the 1909 Gando Convention that relegated the area to Chinese control. While the Manchurian claims have not received official attention in South Korea, claims for Gando were the subject of a bill introduced in 2004, at a time when China had been claiming that Paekche and Koguryo had been "minority states" within China and the resulting controversy was at its height. The legislation proposed by 59 South Korean lawmakers would have declared the Gando Convention signed under Japanese rule to be "null and void". Later that year, the two countries reached an understanding that their governments would refrain from further involvement in the historical controversy.