# Wanpaoshan incident and anti-Chinese riots (1 July 1931)

URL: https://allhistories.com/north-korea/timeline/1931-wanpaoshan-incident-and-anti-chinese-riots
Location: Changchun, Manchuria
Themes: Society

On 1 July 1931 a quarrel over an irrigation canal between Chinese farmers and Korean settlers at Wanpaoshan, near Changchun in Manchuria, led to a confrontation in which Japanese consular police intervened. No one was killed. Korean newspapers, relying on exaggerated Japanese reports, published false claims that many Koreans had been massacred. In the following days anti-Chinese riots broke out in Incheon, Seoul, Pyongyang and other cities, and mobs attacked Chinese residents and shops. More than a hundred Chinese were killed, most of them in Pyongyang. The riots inflamed relations between Koreans and Chinese just weeks before the Mukden incident of September 1931, when Japan began its invasion of Manchuria. Some Korean editors later acknowledged that they had been misled, and the independence movement sought to repair ties with the Chinese. The incident showed how colonial propaganda could turn colonized peoples against one another.

## Why it matters
The Wanpaoshan affair poisoned Korean–Chinese relations on the eve of Japan's conquest of Manchuria.

Ruler at the Time: [Kazushige Ugaki](https://allhistories.com/north-korea/rulers/kazushige-ugaki)

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Wanpaoshan Incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanpaoshan_Incident)
- [Wikipedia — Japanese invasion of Manchuria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_invasion_of_Manchuria)
- [Wikipedia — Japanese Rule (period overview)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule)