Icy, unpredictable, and treacherous, the dangers of the Yalu River between Korea and China were heightened in the twentieth century when it became part of the longest non-maritime border of the Japanese Empire. Border of Water and Ice (Cornell University Press, 2024) focuses on the river at this critical juncture, analyzing how imperial Japan attempted to harness and control this fluid border. By examining both human and nonhuman actors — including water, ice, timber cutters, smugglers, and anti-Japanese guerrillas — Joseph Seeley shows how the Yalu determined how borders were drawn, how imperial power was exerted, and how local resistance was enacted.

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About the speaker

Dr. Joseph Seeley is a proud graduate of Stanford's History Department (PhD 2019) and currently an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia's Corcoran Department of History. A specialist in the histories of Korea, the Japanese Empire, and the East Asian environments and borderlands, Seeley is the author of the recently-published Border of Water and Ice as well as articles on such topics as cattle disease control in colonial Korea, Japanese colonial zoos in Seoul and Taipei, Korean tiger-human relations, and US-Korea relations. He is currently working on two new book projects: one a solo-authored work on the environmental history of North Korea, the other a co-authored project (with Aaron Skabelund and Lisa Yoshikawa) on the history of hunting in the Japanese Empire.