The Plan to Conquer Yanbian and Hunchun (9)

Those who excel at their studies often say the same thing.

‘Know your place.’

To spell out what that means:

If your current ability is at an elementary school level, you must steadily work through elementary school workbooks before you can hope to earn even a Level 5 score someday.

If you want to earn a coding certificate but do not even know how to turn on a computer, find a computer academy attended by elderly people and enroll.

By the same principle, if we are to succeed in developing Manchuria, we first need to understand exactly what kind of place it is.

“It's plains as far as the horizon—nothing but plains.”

In Joseon, apart from a tiny handful of places, including the Naju Plains, it is difficult to see the horizon.

That is because 70 percent of the Korean Peninsula is mountainous, with so many mountains that one can see them no matter where one looks.

Manchuria, however, has a high proportion of plains and many rivers formed by water flowing down from the rugged mountains scattered throughout the region...