Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences, Tsinghua University
Professor Song’s research and teaching focus on late imperial and modern China, with special interest in China’s ethnic frontiers, East Asian trans-regional networks, historical geography, and international relations. Before joining the Tsinghua Institute of Advanced Studies as a professor, he was on the faculty at the University of Maryland—Baltimore County (UMBC).
He is the author of Making Borders in Modern East Asia: The Tumen River Demarcation, 1881–1919 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), which explores the making of the China-Korean boundary and the Korean diaspora society in Northeast China. His Chinese monograph, Faxian Dongya [发现东亚] (Beijing: New Star Press; Taipei: Linking Publishing Company, 2019. Hong Kong: Open Page, 2019. Seoul: Yoksabipyungsa, 2020) rethinks East Asia’s intricate relations with global modernity from the 16th century onward. His articles have appeared in The American Historical Review, The Journal of Asian Studies, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Research, and The Asia-Pacific Journal, among others.
His next book project, The West Stupa: Three and Half Centuries of a Chinese Neighborhood, aims to examine the evolution of East Asia from the nearly 400 years’ transformation of a small urban space.
Panel 2 | Borderlands
Can History Survive the Nation-state? Rethinking the Sino-Korean Koguryŏ Controversy
ABSTRACT
If future historians were to examine the history of Sino-Korean relations, the “Koguryŏ controversy” of the early 21st century would undoubtedly emerge as a topic of particular significance. Koguryŏ, or Gaogouli (高句丽, 37 BCE–668 CE), was an ancient polity that flourished in what is now Northeast China and the northern Korean Peninsula, known for its rich culture and formidable power in Northeast Asia during its time.
While both countries have since deepened their research on Koguryŏ, the issue remains sensitive. Why, then, did a frontier regime that vanished over 1,300 years ago ignite such intense controversy in post-Cold War East Asia, even becoming a diplomatic dispute between China and South Korea? I argue that the controversy, which emerged over 20 years ago, brought questions of East Asia’s relationship to modernity into focus.
Echoing Prasenjit Duara’s influential theme of “rescuing history from the nation state,” this article revisits the origins, historical context, and current challenges of the controversy, examining the complex tensions between “histories” and the “nation- state”—and whether the two must inevitably clash.
