Claudius Kim

Claudius (Kyung Yeob) Kim received his bachelor’s degree at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where he majored in Global China Studies. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate studying modern Korean and Chinese history at Stanford University. His dissertation project, tentatively titled “The Sino-Korean Revolution: Korean Soldiers, Migrants, and Revolutionaries in Trans-war East Asia (1932-50),” uncover the transnational dimensions of Korea and China’s deeply intertwined, or “braided,” revolutions. I argue that the Yan’an Group (Korean Communists who fought with Mao Zedong’s Eighth Route Army) and the Chinese Communist Party, and the Korean Provisional Government (Korean nationalists) and the Chinese Nationalist Party, separately envisioned the contiguous geography of Korea and China as a singular, seamless battleground for the waging of what I call “Sino-Korean Revolution”— a transnationally conceived anti-colonial and nation-building project during the age of Japanese empire and its aftermath. I conceptualize ordinary Korean soldiers and migrants who participated in this project as key transnational agents of China and Korea’s revolutionary transformation. Drawing on multilingual archives from China, Korea, and Japan, my dissertation brings into dialogue scholarships on the Chinese Revolution, the North Korean Revolution, and Japanese empire. Proposing a new approach to revolution that bridges diplomatic history and migration studies, my work highlights the mutually constitutive nature of revolutionary politics, diplomacy, and the everyday lives of migrants.