[Book Talk] Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan's Empire in Korea and Manchuria

Border of Water and Ice (Cornell University of Press, 2024; cropped)

Prof. Joseph Seeley, University of Virginia

Tuesday, June 3, 2025
4:00 PM

Bunche Hall, Rm 10383

Professor Seeley will be speaking about his new book, Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan's Empire in Korea and Manchuria (Cornell University Press, 2024). From 1910 to 1945, the Yalu River was part of the longest formal, non-maritime border of the Japanese Empire—a pivotal site for shoring control over Japanese-occupied Korea and for projecting imperial power further into Manchuria. This talk examines how the politics and violence of the border were critically shaped by the river's annual cycles of wintertime freezing, springtime thawing, and summertime monsoonal flooding. More than just a static backdrop to human politics, the seasonally changing Yalu River played an active role in border making and unmaking.  

Dr. Joseph Seeley is an Assistant Professor at the Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia, who specializes in the histories of Korea, the Japanese Empire, and the East Asian environments and borderland. 

This is part of the "Koreans in the World" project hosted by UCLA's Center for Korean Studies. This event is supported by the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS Award Number: AKS-2023-SRI-2200001) as part of its Strategic Research Institute Program for Korean Studies. 

Sponsor(s): Center for Korean Studies, Academy of Korean Studies