Piao Guobin
Yanbian University

Received July 21, 2021; Revised version received December 30, 2021; Accepted February 10, 2022

Abstract

Until now, the ethnic Koreans in China have been represented as successful minorities within China. However, the historical wounds they carry cut deep, still influencing their lives today. For ethnic Koreans in China, the deterioration of relations with the people in places where they reside following such historical wounds is a matter that must not be ignored, as such relations may be a strategy intimately tied to future survival. In this vein, this article focuses on the historical wounds that are the source of deterioration of relationships and historical trauma as the origin of said deterioration. The ethnic Koreans, called Cháoxiānzú in China, are a minority group in the People’s Republic of China, and Koreans who lived in Manchuria historically share much common history with these ethnic Koreans. Therefore, to track the origin of the historical trauma of the Koreans in China, or the Korean- Chinese, it is necessary to understand first the Koreans in Manchuria. The modern Manchurian space where the Korean people resided was not just a geographical space, but also a political one wherein social, cultural, and political relations were concentrated. The Qing, Russia, and Japan ushered Manchuria into the modern era through a direct process of power building. Historical events that occurred in complex spatial changes left different memories and wounds depending on each ethnic group living in Manchuria. The problem is that these memories and wounds could not be properly healed, only rendered invisible in the “sealing” in a new space of liberation and the process of establishing a nation state, and this “sealing” became an opportunity to create yet another trail of memory distortion and historical scars.

Key Words : historical trauma, Korean-Chinese, Koreans in Manchuria, imperialism, modern Manchurian space.