A THIRD KOREA: PHOTOS OF YANBIAN, CHINA
Bordering North Korea and Russia, the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture is one of thirty autonomous prefectures in China.
Centuries ago, the region belonged to Choson Korea, before coming under the rule of the Qing emperors. In the late 19th century, Koreans began to return en masse, driven primarily by economic factors and later to escape the Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula.
The People’s Republic of China granted ethnic Koreans their own autonomous region in 1955, in gratitude for their service during the Chinese Civil War. At the time, ethnic Koreans comprised some 60% of the local population, but today that figure has halved, largely due to migration within China and abroad to South Korea.
Today’s Yanbian is a fascinating mix of Han, Manchu, and Korean peoples, strongly influenced by South Korean popular culture and overshadowed by the region's proximity to North Korea.
