¹ Paektusan means ‘White Head/Top Mountain’ in Korean, while ‘Changbaishan’ can be interpreted to mean ‘Long White Mountain’ or ‘Ever-White Mountain’. The suffix san/shan means ‘mountain’ in Korean and Chinese, respectively.

² On the Millennium Eruption, see Xu, J. et al., ‘Climatic Impact of the Millennium Eruption of Changbaishan Volcano in China: New Insights from High-Precision Radiocarbon Wiggle-Match Dating’. Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 40, no. 1, 16 January 2013, pp. 54–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wei, H., et al., ‘Review of Eruptive Activity at Tianchi Volcano, Changbaishan, Northeast China: Implications for Possible Future Eruptions’. Bulletin of Volcanology, vol. 75, no. 4, 14 March 2013, pp. 1–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Horn, S., ‘Volatile Emissions During the Eruption of Baitoushan Volcano (China/North Korea) c. 969 AD’. Journal of Vulcanology, vol. 61, no. 8, February 2000, pp. 537–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Even selecting a name for the mountain is a politically fraught exercise. Since the mountain is little known in the West, there is no one commonly accepted English name for it. What we call the mountain depends on which side of the border we approach it from—both physically and conceptually. In this article, I will combine the Korean and Chinese names, and call the mountain ‘Mount Paektu/Changbai’ when referring to the mountain as a geographical object. When considering the narrative of a particular explorer, I will use the name contained within that text, using the pronunciation of the spoken language of the writer. On competition over mountains between nations, see Debarbieux, B., Rudaz, G., and Price, M., The Mountain: A Political History from the Enlightenment to the Present, (trans. Todd, J.), University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2015CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sahlins, Peter, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989Google Scholar.

⁴ On conflicts over the mountain, see Y. Ahn, ‘China and Korea Clash over Mount Paekdu/Changbai: Memory Wars Threaten Regional Accommodation’. Japan Focus, 27 July 2007, http://japanfocus.org/-Yonson-Ahn/2483, [accessed 19 January 2018]. These conflicts occurred in the context of the Chinese Academy of Social Science's ‘Northeast Project’, a state-sponsored research agenda which claimed that pre-modern polities such as Kokoryŏ and Parhae were integral parts of Rawski, China. E., Early Modern China and Northeast Asia: Cross-Border Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2015, pp. 245–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁶ Pioneering scholarship on cartography and the border question can be found in Kim, S., Ginseng and Borderland: Territorial Boundaries and Political Relations Between Qing China and Choson Korea, 1636–1912, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2017Google Scholar; N. Song, ‘The Journey Towards “No Man's Land”: Interpreting the China-Korea Borderland Within Imperial and Colonial Contexts’. The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 76, no. 4, November 2017, pp. 1035–058. Schmid, A., ‘Tributary Relations and the Qing-Choson Frontier on Mount Paektu’, in The Chinese State at the Borders, University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver, BC, 2007, pp. 116–40Google Scholar; Jung, Chi-yong, ‘The People of Joseon's Perception of Baekdusan Viewed Through Geographical Materials’. The Review of Korean Studies, vol. 13, no. 4, December 2010, pp. 105–32Google Scholar. For an overview of legends, see Cho, Hyun-soul, ‘The Significance in Perception of Baekdusan in Baekdu-Related Myths’. The Review of Korean Studies, vol. 13, no. 4, December 2010, pp. 33–52Google Scholar. Fruitful considerations of ascents of the mountain include Shin, Ik-cheol, ‘Travel to Baekdusan and its Significance During the Joseon Period’. Review of Korean Studies, vol. 13, no. 4, December 2010, pp. 13–31Google Scholar; Haeussler, S., ‘Descriptions of the Baekdusan and the Surrounding Area in Russian and German Travel Accounts’. Review of Korean Studies, vol. 13, no. 4, December 2010, pp. 151–86Google Scholar.

⁷ Works that similarly place the physicality of other mountains at the centre of inquiry include Bernstein, A., ‘Whose Fuji?: Religion, Region, and State in the Fight for a National Symbol’. Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 63, no. 1, 2008, pp. 51–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yü, D. Smyer, Mindscaping the Landscape of Tibet: Place, Memorability, Ecoaesthetics, Walter de Gruyter, Boston, 2015Google Scholar.

⁸ Pratt, M., Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, Routledge, London, 2007, p. 34Google Scholar.

⁹ On the importance of non-Western participants in the creation of what has previously been seen as Western knowledge, see Raj, K., Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2007CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For particularly fruitful examples of this scholarship on China, see Fan, F., British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire, and Cultural Encounter, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2009Google Scholar, and Mueggler, E., The Paper Road: Archive and Experience in the Botanical Exploration of West China and Tibet, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2011Google Scholar.

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¹¹ Russian and Qing forces frequently clashed in the watersheds of the Amur (Heilongjiang) and Sungari (Songhuajiang) rivers, while Korean ginseng gatherers and fur-trappers threatened the woodland resources that were central to the Qing economy. Perdue, P., China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005Google Scholar; Kim, Ginseng and Borderland.

¹² Crossley, P., ‘Manzhou Yuanliu Kao and the Formalization of the Manchu Heritage’. The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 46, no. 4, November 1987, pp. 761–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ My understanding of Umuna's journey has benefited tremendously from Mark Elliott's treatment of the narrative in his seminal essay: Elliott, M., ‘The Limits of Tartary: Manchuria in Imperial and National Geographies’. The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 59, no. 3, August 2000, pp. 603–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Umuna's narrative is also examined in Whiteman, S., ‘Kangxi's Auspicious Empire: Rhetorics of Geographic Integration in the Early Qing’, in Chinese History in Geographical Perspective, Du, Y. and Kyong-McClain, J. (eds), Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, 2013, pp. 39–43Google Scholar; Crossley, P., A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000Google Scholar; Stary, Giovanni, ‘Il “Vero” Esploratore Del Changbaishan e Il Valore Delle Relative Fonti: Un'analisi Critica’, in Selected Manchu Studies: Contributions to History, Literature, and Shamanism of the Manchus, Walravens, H. (ed.), Klaus Schwarz Verlag, Berlin, 2013, pp. 266–80Google Scholar. The most extensive analysis of Umuna's expedition can be found in Hun, L., ‘Expedition to Mt. Changbai and Imperial Authority in the Early Qing Period’. Dongyang Sahak Yongu, vol. 126, 31 March 2014, pp. 236–75Google Scholar. My thanks to Professor Seonmin Kim of Korea University for providing this reference.

¹⁴ On the region's economic importance, see Bello, D., Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain: Environment, Identity, and Empire in Qing China's Borderlands, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2015Google Scholar; Schlesinger, J., A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule, Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, 2017Google Scholar; Kim, Ginseng and Borderland.

¹⁵ The scholarship on sacred mountains in China is vast. The most comprehensive summaries can be found in Robson, J., Power of Place: The Religious Landscape of the Southern Sacred Peak (Nanyue) in Medieval China, Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge, MA, 2009Google Scholar; see also Dott, B., Identity Reflections: Pilgrimages to Mount Tai in Late Imperial China, Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge, MA, 2004Google Scholar, and Lewis, M., ‘The Feng and Shan Sacrifices of Emperor Wu of the Han’, in State and Court Ritual in China, Loewe, M. and Shaughnessy, E. (eds), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999Google Scholar.

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¹⁷ Both Lee Hun and Stary list multiple versions of the Umuna narrative. Chinese versions were penned by Han literati at the court in the years immediately following the expedition and appeared in a variety of compilations, beginning in the late seventeenth century. Manchu versions were published later in the eighteenth century. I rely here on two versions of the narrative, one in Chinese compiled in Wang Shizhen's Chi bei ou tan of 1691, and Stary's translation of the 1783 Manchu version from Manjusai da sekiyen-i kimcin bithe (Manzhou yuan liu kao). For a detailed comparison of different Chinese and Manchu texts, see Stary, ‘Il “Vero” Esploratore Del Changbaishan’, pp. 271–80. Multiple versions of the narrative have resulted in multiple renditions of the name of the expedition leader. Here I follow Elliott's spelling ‘Umuna’, though it can also be spelled ‘Umene’, and Stary insists that the true Manchu name of the explorer was ‘Umne’.

¹⁸ For an important discussion of these regional differences, see Bello, Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain, pp. 63–115.

¹⁹ Shizhen, Wang, Chi bei ou tan, Vol. 1, Zhong hua shu ju, Beijing, 1982, p. 89Google Scholar.

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²¹ Wang Shizhen, Chi bei ou tan, Vol. 1, p. 90.

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²³ Haeussler, ‘Descriptions of the Baekdusan and the Surrounding Area in Russian and German Travel Accounts’, p. 166.

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²⁵ Wang Shizhen, Chi bei ou tan, Vol. 1, p. 91.

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²⁷ On Kangxi's cartography projects, see Perdue, P., ‘Boundaries, Maps, and Movement: Chinese, Russian, and Mongolian Empires in Early Modern Central Eurasia’. The International History Review, vol. 20, no. 2, June 1998, pp. 263–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Perdue, China Marches West; Millward, J., ‘“Coming onto the Map”: Western Regions’ Geography and Cartographic Nomenclature in the Making of Chinese Empire in Xinjiang’. Late Imperial China, vol. 20, no. 2, 1999, pp. 61–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Manchu mapping of the northeast, see Cheng, Zhi (Kicengge), ‘Man wen ‘Ula deng chu di fang tu’. Gu gong xue shu ji kan, vol. 26, no. 4, 2009, pp. 1–74Google Scholar; and Cheng, Zhi (Kicengge), Daichin Gurun to sono jidai: teikoku no keisei to hakki shakai, Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, Nagoya, 2009Google Scholar.

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²⁹ Di, Li, Kangxi ji xia ge wu bian yi zhu, Shanghai gu ji chu ban she, Shanghai, 1993, p. 90Google Scholar. This essay is analysed in Whiteman, ‘Kangxi's Auspicious Empire’, pp. 39–43, and also Dott, Identity Reflections, p. 161.

³⁰ Li Di, Kangxi ji xia ge wu bian yi zhu, p. 90. (Translation by author.)

³¹ Kim, Ginseng and Borderland, pp. 70–74; Cho, H., ‘The Significance in Perception of Baekdusan in Baekdu-Related Myths’. The Review of Korean Studies, vol. 13, no. 4, December 2010, pp. 33–52Google Scholar; Breuker, R., Establishing a Pluralist Society in Medieval Korea, 918–1170: History, Ideology and Identity in the Koryŏ Dynasty, Brill, Leiden, 2010CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³⁴ Kwon, Nae-hyun, ‘Changes in Perception of Baekdusan in the Late Joseon Period’. Review of Korean Studies, vol. 13, no. 4, December 2010, pp. 73–103Google Scholar; Jung, ‘The People of Joseon's Perception of Baekdusan Viewed Through Geographical Materials’.

³⁵ The earliest extant accounts of Korean climbs of Mount Paektu are from the eighteenth century. See Ik-cheol Shin, ‘Travel to Baekdusan’.

³⁶ Hong Se-t'ae, ‘Pektusan gi’. Yuha chip, vol. 9, 1730, pp. 14b–22b. Database of Korean Classics. http://db.itkc.or.kr/inLink?DCI=ITKC_MO_0440A_0100_030_0020_2004_A167_XML, [accessed 19 January 2018].

³⁷ Sŏ Myŏng-ŭng, ‘Yu Paektusan'gi’. Pomanje chip, vol. 7, 1838, pp. 17a–28b. Database of Korean Classics. http://db.itkc.or.kr/inLink?DCI=ITKC_MO_0540A_0090_010_0140_2005_A233_XML, [accessed 19 January 2018].

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⁴¹ Sŏ, ‘Yu Paektusan'gi’, pp. 17b–18a.

⁴² Ibid., pp. 23a–b. Sŏ’s understanding of regional geography was quite accurate: the latitude of Shenyang is 41.8 degrees north. ‘GeoHack—Shenyang’. https://tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Shenyang&params=41.8_N_123.4_E_type:city(8106171)_region:CN-21, [accessed 22 January 2018].

⁴³ Ibid., p. 20b.

⁴⁴ Ibid., pp. 23b–24a.

⁴⁵ On the distaste of the literati for manifestations of mountain shamanism, see Lee, K. and Koo, S., ‘The Confucian Transformation of Mountain Space: Travels by Late-Chosŏn Confucian Scholars and the Attempted Confucianization of Mountains’. Journal of Korean Religions, vol. 5, no. 2, 1 October 2014, pp. 119–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁴⁷ Ibid., pp. 26b–28b.

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⁴⁹ N. Kwon, ‘Chosŏn Yŏngjo Tae Paektu sanje sihaeng nonjaeng—ch'amyŏ inmul ŭi chujang ŭl chungsim ŭro’. Han'guk inmul sa yon'gu, no. 15, March 2011, pp. 273–301.

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⁵³ Ibid., p. 14; Cavendish, A. E. J., Korea and the Sacred White Mountain: Being a Brief Account of a Journey in Korea in 1891, G. Philip & Son, London, 1894, p. 172Google Scholar. The name of the mountain in these narratives varies, depending on which side the expedition began. Younghusband began his trek on the Qing side, hence ‘Long White Mountain’; Cavendish climbed from the Korean side, but eliminated the word ‘Head/Top’ from ‘Paektusan’.

⁵⁴ Raj, Relocating Modern Science, pp. 181–82.

⁵⁵ Cavendish, Korea and the Sacred White Mountain, p. 152.

⁵⁶ Younghusband, The Heart of a Continent, p. 11.

⁵⁷ Cavendish, Korea and the Sacred White Mountain, p. 163.

⁵⁸ Ibid., p. 175. The earliest reference to Mount Paektu/Changbai as a volcano appears in the 1872 memoir of a Russian cleric's trek across Manchuria: Morgan, E. Delmar, ‘The Recent Journey of the Archimandrite Palladius Through Manchuria’. Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of London, vol. 16, no. 3, 1871, pp. 204–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁶⁰ This complex history is clearly summarized in Schmid, A., Korea Between Empires, 1895–1919, Columbia University Press, New York, 2002Google Scholar. On the disputes over Kando, see Song, ‘The Journey Towards “No Man's Land”’; and Kim, Ginseng and Borderland, pp. 128–51.

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⁸³ Ibid., p. 240.

⁸⁴ Ibid., pp. 113–28.

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