Koreans in the borderlands region of Yanbian have been assailed by numerous cultural, political and economic forces throughout their century-and-a-half in northeast China as changes have swept through the region.

For many decades these developments have been closely linked to the relationship between China and North Korea, or to cataclysmic transformations taking place within Chinese society to which the Chosonjok, in their unique border location, have had to adapt.

Since the 1990s, however, the growth of South Korea as an economic and cultural powerhouse has eclipsed the DPRK, rendering Yanbian’s closest Korean neighbor something of a blank spot in terms