page_title: Tonghua
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Tonghua / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Manchuria AMS Topographic Maps
context_page_description: Tonghua is an industrial city in the south of Jilin province, People's Republic of China. It borders North Korea's Chagang Province to the south and southeast, Baishan to the east, Jilin City to the north, Liaoyuan to the northwest, and Liaoning province to the west and southwest. Administratively, it is a prefecture-level city with a total population of 2,325,242 living in an area of 15,195 square kilometres. Urban population is 506,877. It is known as one of the five medicine production centres in China.
context_section_description: Human settlement in the Tonghua area dates from about 6000 years ago. In the Western Han Dynasty, Tonghua belonged to the Liaodong Fourth Commandery (遼東四郡).
  Tonghua was the birthplace of Goguryeo culture and shaman culture. The Goguryeo kingdom established its capital at Gungnae in 425 A.D., which, together with the Tombs of the Ancient Gogoryeo Kingdom, represents the only successful, independent submission to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
  Under the Japanese occupation of Manchuria after 1932, a railway was constructed linking Tonghua with the main Manchurian rail network and with northern Korea.
  During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Yang Jingyu led the First Army of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army to battle the Imperial Japanese Army, and was killed in battle.
  In August 1945 Tonghua briefly served as the temporary capital of Manchukuo, where Puyi claimed to abdicate at the behest of the Kwantung Army. In 1985, Tonghua became a prefecture-level city under the approval of the State Council.
  The city has a recent record of extreme violence including the Shosankoku incident in 1945, the Tonghua Incident in 1946 and the Tonghua Iron and Steel Group riot in 2009.
caption: Map including Tonghua (labeled as T'UNG-HUA 通化) (AMS, 1955)
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