Name: [Colloquium] Korean and Japanese Field Research on the Geography of East and Inner Asia (1939-1945)
Start: 2026-02-26T18:00:00+09:00
End: 2026-02-26T20:00:00+09:00
Location: ARI - Asiatic Research Institute 고려대학교 아세아문제연구소

[Colloquium] Korean and Japanese Field Research on the Geography of East and Inner Asia (1939-1945)

Seoul Colloquium in Korean Studies
(the Seoul Center of EFEO)
TITLE:
Korean and Japanese Field Research on the Geography of East and Inner Asia under Colonisation (1939-1945)
SPEAKER: Robert Winstanley-Chesters

The February 2026 session of the “Seoul Colloquium in Korean Studies” organized by the Seoul Center of the EFEO will be held as an in-person event on Thursday February 26th in the Grand Conference Room (Room number 310), of the Asiatic Research Institute, Korea University, beginning at 6:00 pm.
All who wish to participate are asked to register in advance by sending an email to [email protected]

DATE: Thursday. February 26, 2024. 6:00PM
VENUE: Grand Conference Room (#310), of the Asiatic Research Institute, Korea University
Take Exit 1 from Korea University subway station, turn right onto the footpath leading up onto the campus. Walk straight up the road past LG Posco Hall, the Business School and Main Library (all on the right hand side). The Asiatic Research Institute (ARI) is the building next after the Main Library
After 6 PM the front door of the Institute may be locked. If the door is locked, phone to the EFEO Seoul Center (02-921-4526) so that we can let you into the building.

[Image: Professor Tada Fumio and students from Keijo Imperial University engaging in trigonometric fieldwork in Mengjiang/Inner Mongolia in 1939. © Komazawa University collection]

SUMMARY:
The 1930s witnessed extraordinary developments in geographic knowledge production practices in Inner Asia. Rapid technological change and an imperial project meant that the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia was suddenly required to become knowable and quantifiable to the Japanese empire. This presentation considers academic production on Inner Mongolia (known to the Japanese as Mengjiang or Mōkyō) between 1939-1945, and the role played by Korean and Japanese geographers’ fieldwork there. This fieldwork sought not only to understand the area’s geography, but also to make knowable its future agricultural and productive potential. In particular the paper focuses on visits of a collaborative team of Korean and Japanese Geographers, led by Professor Tada Fumio, who made field trips to Inner Mongolia in 1939/1940, and the material remains of these visits including fieldwork notebooks held by Komazawa University, Tokyo and field reports produced by Keijō Imperial University’s Man-Mou/Man-Mong/Continental Research Group. Professor Tada and his researchers undertook trigonometric and slope analysis and other methodologies to analyse the role of climate and soil in the area’s agricultural future. Finally, the presentation considers these exchanges between Korean and Japanese academics and the landscapes themselves through the lens of social and historical geography, and their contribution to imagined visions of Inner and East Asian geographic and social scientific futures.
BIO:
Robert Winstanley-Chesters is currently a Kyujanggak Fellow at SNU’s ICKS. Prior to this Robert Winstanley-Chesters worked as an AKS Teaching and Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, a Lecturer at York St John University, Bath Spa University, University of Leeds, Birkbeck, University of London, as a Research Fellow at Australian National University, and as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge. He obtained a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Leeds in 2008/2013. Author of the monographs ‘Vibrant Matter(s): Fish, Fishing and Community in North Korea and Her Neighbours’ (Springer, 2020) and ‘New Goddess on Mt Paektu: Myth and Transformation in North Korean Landscape’ (Black Halo/Amazon KDP, 2020), he is currently researching the processes and landscapes of geographic knowledge production, fieldwork and theory during the Japanese Imperial and Korean colonial era, which is the subject of a forthcoming co-authored monograph for Amsterdam University Press/Routledge.