Across the Tumen: What a Trip to China Revealed About the Future of Northeast Asia

James Younil Auh | Dean, Kyung Hee Cyber University

In late November, I traveled to Yanbian in northeastern China for the inaugural Northeast Asia Cooperation Workshop, a joint initiative between KCPC and the Hanns Seidel Foundation. On the surface, it was a modest gathering: a series of meetings in Yanji, a few days of travel along the borderlands, and conversations shared around a table with scholars, NGO leaders, government officials, journalists, and businesspeople from the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture.

Yet, the deeper story, what these landscapes and encounters quietly disclosed, was far larger. Standing at the fault lines of China, North Korea, and Russia, one cannot escape the sense that history here is not written in abstractions. It breathes at the border crossings; it speaks in the wind pushing across the Tumen River; it lingers in the eyes of those who have lived too long between worlds.

The official report will tell you the facts: that the workshop ran from November 23–26, that Dr. Bernhard Seliger and his Seoul office team attended, that KCPC leadership including President J.R. Kim and Kyung Hee Cyber University Dean Auh Yoon-il participated, that fruitful dialogues were held, and that border sites such as Fangchuan, Hunchun, Tumen, and Kaishantun were visited to explore future pathways of cooperation.

But facts alone do not capture what it means to walk in a region shaped simultaneously by geopolitical tension and the quiet persistence of hope.

Where Borders Become Mirrors

In Hunchun, where three nations almost touch, China, North Korea, and Russia, are separated only by narrow lines on the map and by histories that refuse to stay in the past. Standing before the Quanhe border crossing toward Rason, North Korea, or the Janglingzi checkpoint toward Russia, the air feels different: heavier, alert, yet strangely open.

Borderlands are mirrors. They reflect not only the divisions we live with, but also the futures we have not yet dared to build.

What struck me most during these visits was not the barbed wire or the formality of customs infrastructure. It was how ordinary the extraordinary felt--how markets, roads, and daily life continued just meters away from geopolitical flashpoints. These places remind us that international relations are not negotiated only in capital cities or policy briefings; they are lived by the people whose lives unfold in the shadows of these dividing lines.

Conversations That Crossed More Than Borders

During two formal meetings in Yanji, participants exchanged views with a sincerity that feels increasingly rare in a world defined by polarization. The scholars, civic leaders, and officials from the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture did not speak in slogans or rehearsed diplomatic language. They spoke of daily realities, economic constraints, cultural identity, youth migration, and the fragile hope for sustained peace and practical cooperation.

Their questions were humble and human:

• How can civil society organizations collaborate when politics grow unpredictable?

• What role can universities play when cross-border learning becomes difficult?

• How do we maintain cultural identity without isolating ourselves from the world?

  
  

In these moments, the workshop became more than a meeting. It became a rehearsal for a more relational geopolitics--one built not from dominance, but from listening.

The Paradox of Distance and Nearness

Yanbian is geographically close to the Korean Peninsula, yet its worldview is profoundly global. You feel the paradox immediately: here is a place shaped by its proximity to North Korea, yet also by the aspirations of a Chinese minority culture with deep transnational ties.

This duality matters. It means the region is uniquely positioned to become a soft bridge in Northeast Asia--not by erasing borders, but by enabling forms of cooperation that respect political complexity while insisting on human connection.

During our field visits, I found myself imagining what “cooperation” might mean in pragmatic terms:

• educational exchanges insulated from political volatility,

• cross-border ecological research along the endangered Tumen River basin,

• small and steady cultural projects that rebuild trust where diplomacy alone cannot,

• and civil society networks that keep dialogue alive even when governments cannot.

  
  

Peace in this corner of the world will not arrive loudly. It will arrive through persistence--through the unglamorous, daily work of people who choose to remain in conversation.

A Farewell That Marks a Beginning

Dr. Bernhard Seliger, who has long partnered closely with KCPC, will conclude his tenure in Seoul at the end of December before assuming leadership of the Hanns Seidel Foundation’s Washington D.C. office. His transition is not a closing chapter but the opening of a new diplomatic corridor. The workshop’s success means that what began as a one-time gathering can now evolve into an annual, multi-stakeholder platform involving Seoul, Washington, and Northeast China.

This is how real cooperation grows--not from grand declarations, but from infrastructure of trust built over years, across borders, sustained by people who refuse to give up on dialogue.

What We Brought Home

Traveling through the borderlands taught me something unexpected: Peace work is not the pursuit of harmony. It is the disciplined willingness to stay present in places where harmony has not yet arrived.

The Tumen River does not pretend that cooperation is easy. It simply flows, crossing boundaries that humans fight to preserve. Watching it, I felt that the river carried a lesson: the path forward is not obstruction but movement—patient, persistent, and quietly transformative.

Workshops end. Diplomats move. But the landscapes remain, waiting for us to return with deeper questions and stronger commitments.

As Northeast Asia grows more complex, trips like this remind us that our task is not merely to analyze the region’s tensions. It is to imagine--and practice--the futures that are still possible.