At the Chinese-North Korean border today\, Chinese cranes raise a ne w customs facility\, immigration center\, and cross-border bridge at Tumen. Across the river\, the North Korean bank remains conspicuously still. Refl ected in this present-day asymmetry is a fraught dynamic around infrastruct ural systems whose roots predate this contemporary push for cross-border ex change. By historicizing the infrastructural life of rail transportation ne tworks in post-liberation North Korea\, this talk examines how the struggle to reclaim and operate Japanese-built systems both shaped Sino-North Korea n relations and constituted the possibilities for socialist subject formati on. While North Korea envisioned inherited rail tracks to power state-build ing efforts and forge new socialist subjects\, this vision collided with a material reality in which Chinese technical expertise established operation al hierarchies.
Drawing on North Korean railway discourse and Chinese operational archives\, this talk discusses how the North Korean project of creating proper socialist subjects became entangled with Sino-North Korean technical supervision and command during the Chinese Civil War and Korean War. The story reveals a form of infrastructural coloniality\, in which inh erited technical systems designed under empire continue to reproduce hierar chical relationships and extractive logics after formal colonial rule. Thes e patterns endure\, inviting reflection on how infrastructure can carry pow er relations that persist across borders and political transitions.
<
strong>About the Author:
Haeyoung Kim is an
Assistant Professor of East Asian History in the Department of History at S
an Francisco State University. Her research and teaching interests broadly
include infrastructure and technology in Korea\, empires and their aftermat
hs\, and post-colonial East Asia. Her current book project focuses on the r
elationship between technology and global histories of empire in Korea\, ex
amining how technical designs and the built environment shape historical pr
ocesses\, influencing not only the operation and implementation of infrastr
uctures themselves\, but also how these expressions of power produce and me
diate imperial\, colonial\, and post-colonial spaces and identities. Kim ho
lds a PhD\, MA\, and BA from the University of Chicago\, and a MPP from Har
vard University.