German Studies of Koreans in Manchuria: Gustav Fochler-Hauke and the Influence of Karl Haushofer’s National Socialist Geopolitics

This article analyses scholarship and memoir writing by German geographer Gustav Fochler-Hauke with respect to Korean settlement in Manchuria, and along the Tumen and Yalu/Amnok rivers in the 1930s and early 40s. The research note demonstrates that while Focher-Hauke’s work has its value—not least due to the access he received thanks to the Japanese military government—his concepts of geopolitics and the influence of his mentor and collaborator, Karl Haushofer, renders the work flawed; its value as a historical source for scholars today is therefore limited. The research note begins with Fochler-Hauke’s rising profile within German geopolitical studies and turns toward that field’s documentation of Koreans in Manchuria, the role of borders between Korea and Manchuria, the blind eye turned toward Korean resistance to Japan, and the rehabilitation of some of these scholars and works after World War II.