War and inventing an ethnic minority: Korean Chinese became an ethnic minority of china after the korean war

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War and inventing an ethnic minority: Korean Chinese became an ethnic minority of China after the Korean War Professor Jeanyoung Lee Through the Korean War, Koreans in China became an ethnic minority of China, now widely known as Korean Chinese or Chosonjok. The Chinese perceptions of the Koreans in Northeast part of China, formerly known as Manchuria were shaped by the Koreans’ migration into Manchuria from the late 19th century. Koreans were regarded as foreigners, or sometimes as forerunners of the Japanese invasion to Manchuria in the 1930s. Alliance with Koreans in the anti-Japan movement did not change the Chinese perception. Although Koreans were mobilized by the Communist Party of China (CCP) in the Chinese civil war, their status in China were not clearly defined. But the Korean War changed all these perceptions and status of the Koreans in China, and they became one of 55 ethnic minorities of China. This chapter will review how Koreans in China became Korean Chinese, and illustrate the role of the Korean War in the process of becoming an ethnic minority. It argues that China’s policy towards their ethnic minorities was initially formed in dealing with Koreans in China, and outlines of the policy was institutionalized during the Korean war. As modernist view on making a nation, Koreans in China were born again as an ethnic minority of China. Reconstructing a sub-nation has resulted on inventing a separate ethnic group identity, which is now differentiated from the identities of the Koreans in the Korean peninsula. Korean war made a decisive role in the process.