After the establishment of Manchukuo, this place belonged to Jiandao Province of Manchukuo, and the majority of its residents were Korean. In 1945, Gando was liberated by the Soviet Red Army and came under Soviet military rule, which considered assigning it to North Korean territory.
The majority of Koreans in Gando also supported incorporation into North Korea. Unlike now, Manchuria at the time had a different history from mainland China for several decades, and Gando, which borders North Hamgyong Province, went back and forth with Joseon as if it were its own country, so the identity of the Korean people was clear.
In addition, because North and South Korea were not divided as they are now and Manchukuo was a puppet state of Japan, movement was easy, and the historical awareness that Japan had planted to justify its rule over Manchuria was also influenced, so the Koreans in Gando had no doubt that Gando should be incorporated into North Korean territory.
However, since this was an area of long-standing border dispute between the Korean Empire and the Qing Dynasty since the late Qing Dynasty, it was a place that the Chinese Communist government could not give up, and when the later People’s Republic of China was established, the Communist Party occupied this place from the beginning of the Chinese Civil War, so it was quickly incorporated into Chinese administrative power. Although it does not remain in documentation, it appears that the Soviet Union eventually gave up on making this place North Korean territory.
The independence and incorporation of Gando Koreans into North Korea were thwarted, but thanks to the efforts of independence activist Zhu Dehae, they were recognized as ethnic Koreans of China according to the Communist Party’s policy of recognizing minorities and granting them autonomy, unlike the existing Republic of China, and succeeded in making Gando into Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture.
However, due to the division of North and South Korea and North Korea’s closed policy, exchanges with the Korean Peninsula have decreased significantly compared to before. Even it was cut off from South Korea for 50 years and reconnected after the establishment of diplomatic relations between Korea and China. At this time, the identities of ethnic Koreans, North Koreans, and Koreans were already very different.