Gando Convention

The 1909 Gando Convention (Hangul: 간도협약, Hanja: 間島協約) was a treaty signed between Imperial Japan and Qing China in which Japan recognized China's claims to Jiandao, called Gando in Korean. Japan received railroad concessions in Northeast China ("Manchuria"). The treaty is disputed by some Koreans who maintain an irredentist claim on Gando.

Background

Jiandao, or Gando as it is called in Korean, is part of northeast China. Many different states and tribes succeeded each other in ruling the area during ancient times, to include Korean states such as Buyeo, its successor Goguryeo, and the subsequent Balhae, followed later by the Jurchen Jin Dynasty and the Khitans.

Traditionally, the area was inhabited by nomadic tribes from the north and west, as well as Koreans and Chinese fleeing unrest, famine, or other sociopolitical conditions in their home countries. Eventually it, and much of the rest of Manchuria with it, came under the control of the Manchu and later the Qing Dynasty. Gando itself, as it shared a border with Korea, was a particularly high-frequency destination for Koreans fleeing worsening conditions in the late Joseon Dynasty after the early 1800s. By the middle and late 1800s, Koreans formed a majority of the population living in Gando, and when the Qing opened up Manchuria to Han Chinese migration in the 1870s and Gando in 1881, a large number of Koreans were already living there and this raised a boundary dispute issue that had been negotiated in 1712 but, due to an ambiguity in the characters used, was subject to some speculation which was deftly used by the Koreans living in Gando to claim that they were still on Korean soil. While punishments for cross-border movement into northeast China by Han Chinese and Koreans by their respective governments (the Qing and Joseon) were on the books and Koreans apprehended in Gando were repatriated to Korea by Qing authorities, it is evident that these regulations did not deter people fleeing poor conditions, and they were able to make this claim in an attempt to escape relocation and punishment. The ambiguity in the original 1712 treaty gradually became official Joseon policy, but the issue itself did not come to a head until this time, when the Joseon Dynasty itself was in much turmoil and in no position to re-negotiate the boundary.

By the early 20th century, with increasing Japanese intervention in Korea, more Koreans fled to Gando, where they were sometimes welcomed by local Qing authorities as a source of labor and agricultural skill. Additionally, as a result of this consolidation of Japanese control over Korea (which would culminate with the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910, with which Japan annexed Korea and began the Japanese occupation of Korea that ended in 1945), Korea was not able to re-negotiate the renewed boundary issues with the Qing, which was having problems of its own due to Western imperialism and pressures from Japan.

Japanese interventions

See also: Jiandao incident

By 1905, the Korean Empire was effectively a Japanese protectorate (see Eulsa Treaty). As a result of the Russo-Japanese War which ended in the same year, Korea was fully surrounded and occupied by Japanese troops. The negotiations to end the Russo-Japanese War resulted in the Portsmouth Treaty, which stated that "Japan possesses in Korea paramount political, military, and economical [sic] interests" and with the Russian concessions to Japan effectively ensured a Japanese sphere of influence in northeast Asia.

In 1907, Japanese forces infiltrated the rather porous border between Korea and China, but a few months after this infiltration, the Japanese called the border issue "unsettled" because the majority of the population there was still ethnically Korean; as effective overlords of Korea, they claimed that Japan's jurisdiction over Korean subjects should extend into Gando, and invaded Gando in force in August 1907, which resulted in the Qing administration of China issuing a 13-point refutation asserting its claim to Jiandao.

The convention

As the particulars of the Korean boundary dispute with Qing China and the large population of ethnic Koreans in Gando was no secret to anyone in Northeast Asia, it is likely that the Japanese proposed the Gando Convention as a potential threat to continue pressing to claim Gando for Korea as a part of the Japanese Empire if the concessions by China to Japan listed in the Convention were not granted.

Treaties and agreements, while often lopsided in that era (see unequal treaties), often did at least nominally include concessions for all parties signing such agreements. In the Convention, Japan agreed to recognize Gando as Chinese territory and to withdraw its forces from there back into Korea within two months of the date of the agreement. In return, China conceded exclusive railroad rights in Manchuria to Japan, among other things. The convention also contained provisions for the protection and rights of ethnic Koreans under Chinese rule.

Korean claims

The Korean claim is partly based on what is perceived (on the Korean side) to be an ambiguity in the 1712 boundary agreement between the Qing Dynasty (which ruled China at the time) and the Joseon Dynasty (which ruled Korea at the time); this actually did not become an issue again until about 150 years after the agreement was approved by both parties, when Manchuria and Gando was opened to Han Chinese migration by the Qing. The other major part of the claim relies on the fact that by the time the Gando Convention was signed in 1909, the Korean state (by that time the Korean Empire) was neither consulted nor had any way of disputing the legitimacy of the treaty as it was already a protectorate of the Japanese Empire and was essentially prevented from resolving or re-negotiating the boundary dispute as an independent state, and as such the Gando Convention, like other unequal treaties (such as the Eulsa Treaty and the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910) dealing with Korean territory/governance or claims made by Imperial Japan, should be revoked and the boundary dispute rectified between Korea (though there is no stated consensus on which of the two current Koreas should be party to this) and the People's Republic of China (though the Republic of China, as the nationalist successor to the Qing Dynasty, may be a more legitimate party to this on the Chinese side as it still claims all of the territory held while the Qing Dynasty still ruled China as a sovereign state).

In the modern era

When the Japanese occupation of Korea ended in August 1945, the Soviet administration in the north of Korea and the American administration in the south of Korea hampered any unified Korean claim to Gando, and after the Korean War and the geopolitical situation it created, no serious Korean claim to Gando was made by either North or South Korea. In 1963, North Korea signed a boundary treaty with the People's Republic of China, which settled the boundary between the two at the Yalu/Amnok (Chinese/Korean names) and Tumen Rivers; this agreement primarily stipulated that three-fifths of Heaven Lake at the peak of Mt. Baekdu would go to North Korea, and two-fifths to China.

However, the boundary between North Korea and the People's Republic of China is still contested, in spite of the 1963 agreement. In response to North Korea's perceived lack of support in the Sino-Soviet split, China demanded that North Korea cede its portion of the peak of Mt. Baekdu to China, and between March 1968 and March 1969, a number of border clashes between North Korean forces and Chinese forces took place in the Mt. Baekdu region. Chinese demands for the rest of Mt. Baekdu were eventually dropped in 1970 in order to repair relations between North Korea and China. China has recognized North Korea's sovereignty over some 80% of the islands in the Yalu/Amnok and Tumen Rivers, and also accepted North Korea's control of some 90% of the mouth of the Yalu/Amnok River. While not openly discussed anymore, it would appear that the 1963 agreement is only something of a framework and not exactly a binding contract for either North Korea or China.

South Korea later recognized these agreements as delineating the Korean-Chinese boundary as well. Today, none of the governments involved (North Korea, South Korea, Japan, or China) officially support the claim that Gando is Korean territory or should be reinstated to either Korean state.

For years, the South Korean government avoided making any official statement regarding the Gando Convention. However, in 2004, the South Korean government issued the following statement: "Our government takes the position that the 1909 Gando Convention, signed by Japan illegally without Korea's consent, is null and void, to the extent that the Eulsa Treaty, which deprived Korea of its diplomatic rights in 1905, is a null-and-void treaty obtained through duress." On October 22, 2004, South Korean foreign affairs minister Ban Ki-moon also remarked on the voiding of the Gando Convention.