Northeast Asia

Northeast Asia, sometimes Northeastern Asia, is a subregion of Asia that can be defined any of four ways:

1. The region bounded roughly by the Great Wall in the South, Lake Baikal in the West, the tundra in the North, and the Pacific Ocean in the East. This conception of the region draws attention to cultural and linguistic connections between the Mongols, the Manchus, the Koreans and other indigenous ethnic groups in the region, and to the contestation over the region between China, Russia and Japan since the 17th century.

2. The far eastern peninsula of the Asian continent, now entirely within Russia, especially in the context of its anthropological, biological and geological connections across the Bering Strait with Alaska.

3. Japan and Korea. This usage was adopted by the United States State Department in 1945 and is used by the Association for Asian Studies.

4. China, Japan and Korea. This usage is synonymous with the most common meaning of the term East Asia but has been adopted in response to the extension of the meaning of East Asia in diplomatic circles to include Southeast Asia and sometimes even India, e.g. the East Asian Summit.