Who Drew the Border in 1909?

The Gando Convention—and the Dilemma of a “Treaty Without the People Most Affected”

Gando (Jiandao) is the kind of topic that runs hot on emotion and often breaks on contact with sentences. One side reaches for “it was always ours.” Another shrugs, “it’s long over.” Both moves are seductive—and both can make your writing collapse in the same way: either you translate ancient spheres of activity directly into modern sovereignty, or you let one modern document erase every older memory.

This essay borrows neither slogan. It holds on to three questions only:

1. What is firmly established?

2. What remains disputed—or depends on interpretation?

3. What is the present-day reality we cannot hand-wave away?

If you keep those three questions separate, Gando stops being a shouting match and becomes what it really is: a case study in how borders are made, argued, and sometimes settled without consent.

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1) One word, two rivers: the long shadow of the 1712 boundary marker

In 1712, a boundary marker was set up around the Mt. Paektu area. The famous trouble starts with a single term on the inscription—“Tomun”—and the question of what it refers to: the river we now commonly associate with the Tumen (Duman), or a different water system entirely. Once that ambiguity exists on paper, the border is no longer just geography; it becomes a reading problem—and reading problems have a way of surviving for centuries. (Brunch Story)

The point isn’t “the stele ends the debate” or “the stele is meaningless.”
The point is harsher (and more realistic): the stele turns a border into a document—while leaving the key word foggy enough to schedule future conflict. (Brunch Story)

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2) When talks fail, paperwork doesn’t disappear: the 1880s boundary investigations

By the late 19th century, the dispute wasn’t just academic. Joseon and Qing conducted boundary investigations and negotiations—yet the core interpretive fight (again: what “Tomun” means in practice) did not resolve cleanly into a mutually accepted conclusion. A careful summary is not “someone admitted defeat,” but rather: the argument reached the official table, and still did not settle. (Brunch Story)

If negotiations didn’t conclusively close the issue, then the next “closing document” (1909) doesn’t land on a calm stage—it lands on an already unsettled one.

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3) 1909: the “cleanup” that excluded a key party

In 1909, Japan and Qing concluded what is commonly called the Gando (Jiandao) Convention, which functioned to settle administration and boundary arrangements for the area. In broad outlines, Japan recognized Qing control in the region while receiving concessions—often summarized as railway/mining and related economic rights—as part of the bargain. (Kumsung Dictionary)

Now the knife-twist:
the people most affected—Koreans living there, and the Korean state whose diplomatic autonomy had been stripped—were not positioned as equal contracting parties in the agreement that shaped their reality. That’s why the argument today is not only “whose land historically,” but also “what does it mean when modern borders are fixed through power—without genuine partyhood?” (Kumsung Dictionary)

This is where the phrase “a treaty without the party” stops sounding rhetorical and starts sounding like an operating principle of the age.

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4) Why international law is not a “win button”

People love to say, “Take it to international law and it’s decided.” But border issues rarely behave like a single courtroom scene with dramatic music.

What usually matters—again and again—looks more like a checklist:

• Treaty chains and sequencing: what was concluded, when, and by whom

• Effective control and administration: who actually governed on the ground over time

• Protest, acquiescence, and continuity: how actors responded (or failed to respond) across long periods

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5) The real shape of the problem

A single ambiguous term (“Tomun”)
→ helps generate repeated failed settlements
→ culminates in a “tidying” agreement (1909) that hardens reality
→ leaves a lasting triangle of debate: history / maps / law (Brunch Story)

And that, in plain English, is why Gando remains combustible: it’s not one argument. It’s a stack of arguments that happen on different floors of the building.

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Safe, sober starting points for further reading

If you want references that help you write without drifting into propaganda-tone, start with:

• A focused explanation of the Tomun/Tumen interpretive problem and why it became a flashpoint (Brunch Story)

• A compact overview of the 1909 Gando/Jiandao agreement and the “recognition-for-concessions” logic often used to summarize it (Kumsung Dictionary)

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Bonus: turning this into a Civ-style mod concept (without going full propaganda)

If you drop “Gando” as a literal territorial claim into Civ, it’ll play like a megaphone. If you abstract it into a system, it becomes elegant.

World Wonder concept: “Paektu Boundary Commission Complex”

• Era: Renaissance / early Industrial

• Theme: documents, diplomacy, border administration

• Effects (balanced, not ridiculous):

  • Capital: +Culture, +Gold

  • Empire-wide: Border expansion rate +%

  • Gain 1 Diplomat/Spy (or city-state influence bonus)

The story you’re “coding” isn’t “this land is ours.”
It’s: “borders are manufactured through paperwork, power, and negotiation—and sometimes the wrong people get left out of the room.”