Paper short abstract:

This presentation examines dam projects started by Japanese imperial engineers on the Yalu River and finished by postcolonial regimes decades later, showing how the logics of state-led hydrological engineering spanned the ideological and historical divides of Northeast Asia’s twentieth century.

Paper long abstract:

Evidence of imperial Japan’s developmental ambitions can be found in the Sup’ung Dam, second largest in the world at the time of its completion in 1944. Constructed on the Yalu River border between colonial Korea and Manchukuo, the dam’s completion inspired pride in the accomplishments of “scientific Japan.” But its aftermath also revealed the profound limits of Japanese imperial hubris and overreach.

Sup’ung was the first of seven projected dams along the Yalu, but it was the only one actually finished by the time of Japan’s imperial collapse. This paper examines two additional Yalu dam projects started by Japanese engineers at the height of the Asia-Pacific War in 1942. As Japan’s wartime losses stretched the empire’s resources, dam projects at Ŭiju and Unbong encountered perennial material shortages that frustrated planners and led at times to deadly accidents.

The Ŭiju and Unbong dams were ultimately abandoned and left unfinished as Japan’s defeat in WWII spelled the end of its Asian empire. But one of these dams would live again in a new postcolonial era, as engineers in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and People’s Republic of China eventually completed a dam at the Unbong site in 1967. By examining the rebirth, under postcolonial Chinese and North Korean regimes, of Japanese imperialists’ failed dreams to transform the Yalu, this paper shows how the logics of state-led hydrological engineering spanned the seemingly stark ideological and historical divides of Northeast Asia’s twentieth century.