Possible areas of expansion for China, Japan and Korea if all three begin to modernize in the 1800s?

Depends how early this is. Most of Micronesia is nominally Spanish, but it's prime expansion for Japan

As for Russia, that might be a way to unite Japan and China. Japan can grab Kamchatka and whatever bits of Karafuto/Chishima the Russians won't let them have.

Zero chance of that. Kamchatka (in Petropavlovsk) had the only good harbour in the entire Pacific seaboard before Vladivostok was acquired. I am assuming this is an actual POD in the early 1800s. if you give that up, you might as well give up the whole seaboard. Zero chance.

Also, in the 1800s, if things get really serious, Russia stops mucking around in Europe, cuts a deal with Napoleon/demands subsidies from Britain, brings a fraction of its Napoleonic army over, and stomps Japan's expeditionary attempts until it hurts. Getting to the Amur takes a long time but it's nothing like invading India in terms of "impossible".

Early 1800s Japan has a much bigger better chance of taking California. Or Hawaii. Or Micronesia. Provided the British are building and officer-ing their navy for them, which they would need anyway if they're taking Kamchatka.

For Korea, I expect the easiest route of expansion would be to the north, trying to take the Russian Far East (south of the Amur) and Sakhalin from the Russians? Like this.

Zero chance to the power of zero. That map requires defeating BOTH the Qing and Russia. Russia didn't even grab the Amur basin until 1855. So yes, it needs to defeat China, and then take Russia's only valuable harbour. And Korea, unlike Japan, isn't safe on its island. Russian or Qing troops can just, you know, do it overland. Any such war results with Korea, no matter how quickly industrializing post-1800, getting penned in and giving up concessions.
 
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Also, in the 1800s, if things get really serious, Russia stops mucking around in Europe, cuts a deal with Napoleon/demands subsidies from Britain, brings a fraction of its Napoleonic army over, and stomps Japan until it hurts. Getting to the Amur takes a long time but it's nothing like invading India.
It's even worse than invading India, since there's no Trans-Siberian Railroad to help with logistics and only the trails which led to early ports like Okhotsk and again, to this day there is no land route to Kamchatka--over 2,500 km as the crow flies to the Amur River. The entire operation is determined by naval logistics. If Japan can actually feasibly invade Kamchatka (which OTL Edo Japan could not), then odds are good they'll punch far, far above their weight.
 
It's even worse than invading India, since there's no Trans-Siberian Railroad to help with logistics and only the trails which led to early ports like Okhotsk and again, to this day there is no land route to Kamchatka--over 2,500 km as the crow flies to the Amur River. The entire operation is determined by naval logistics. If Japan can actually feasibly invade Kamchatka (which OTL Edo Japan could not), then odds are good they'll punch far, far above their weight.

Well, there's your problem. Japan cannot feasibly invade Kamchatka against opposition and while Russia's government never had overwhelming interest in the far east, Petropavlovsk was worth fighting over. Kunashir, maybe not. Petropavlovsk? That's ambitious by Japan and it hurts Russia. The world's third biggest (if slightly shabby) navy could afford so spare say, four frigates instead of just one (as historically) for such a task, against a country whose first modern sailing vessel was historically built by Russian seamen half a century after this POD. And it could march people overland to wherever else Japan is landing, on horses and carts and riverboats. Because more or less that's how it worked in the early 1800s and nobody in the area was in any better shape.

Once again, this is "what if Japan/Korea BEGIN to industrialize in the (early) 1800s" - not "what if ASB dumps a wholly functioning industrial economy 60 years in advance of the world's bleeding edge onto Japan, gratis."
 
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Take the easiest and least exposed area to expand and would be Siberia. Eventually that will bring them into conflict with the Russian Empire.
In any conflict between Russia and China in the east, China what have the logistical advantage. the further away from the Chinese heartland the war gos the stronger Russian becomes. Where the final border is drawn add a matter of logistics and probably not military action.
 
Well, there's your problem. Japan cannot feasibly invade Kamchatka against opposition and while Russia's government never had overwhelming interest in the far east, Petropavlovsk was worth fighting over. Kunashir, maybe not. Petropavlovsk? That's ambitious by Japan and it hurts Russia. The world's third biggest (if slightly shabby) navy could afford so spare say, four frigates instead of just one (as historically) for such a task, against a country whose first modern sailing vessel was historically built by Russian seamen half a century after this POD.

Once again, this is "what if Japan/Korea BEGIN to industrialize in the (early) 1800s" - not "what if ASB dumps a wholly functioning industrial economy 60 years in advance of the world's bleeding edge onto Japan, gratis."
And a Japan which industrialises in the early 1800s can't get four frigates to match this, even though by the early 1870s OTL they already had more than this? That's the baseline I'm going on here--the immediate post-Boshin War IJN. It's a clearly feasible operation by those standards. Japan didn't need a fully industrial economy to obtain a few frigates, gunboats, and ironclads OTL. The only hassle in the early 1800s is the fact the Napoleonic Wars are ongoing. What happens afterwards? Well, we can see Japan bought a few ex-US Navy ships, an ex-CSA ironclad, some British ships, and others in the years leading up to the Boshin War and right afterwards. Why wouldn't a newly industrialising Japan do this here? And why wouldn't this fleet easily outmatch whatever Russia could feasibly bring to the Pacific?
 
And a Japan which industrialises in the early 1800s can't get four frigates to match this, even though by the early 1870s OTL they already had more than this? That's the baseline I'm going on here--the immediate post-Boshin War IJN. It's a clearly feasible operation by those standards. Japan didn't need a fully industrial economy to obtain a few frigates, gunboats, and ironclads OTL. The only hassle in the early 1800s is the fact the Napoleonic Wars are ongoing. What happens afterwards? Well, we can see Japan bought a few ex-US Navy ships, an ex-CSA ironclad, some British ships, and others in the years leading up to the Boshin War and right afterwards. Why wouldn't a newly industrialising Japan do this here? And why wouldn't this fleet easily outmatch whatever Russia could feasibly bring to the Pacific?

Because it never outmatched what Russia had even when Russia was restricted in its naval programmes after the Crimean war, until the stars literally aligned in 1905 and WW1/RCW?

I mean it's not ASB that Japan could take Kamchatka by like, 1900, provided the entire century is a Russia-screw as well as a Japan-wank and Japan's increasing potency and threat never throws it into conflict with UK, France, USA or Spain (or China or Korea I suppose) and Japan is focused on taking Kamchatka.

By 1900, if Russia is still without another port except Petropavlovsk (so no Amur acquisition), and doesn't have a navy in the Pacific, chances are it's given up anyway and might not even contest it, by 1900.

But a Russia that's so badly screwed is probably just as badly screwed in Europe, and a Japan that can do that can probably pick off good plantation territory in the South Pacific or Melanesia instead, or more likely, just invade Korea. Or perhaps just take California. Or buy Alaska and the HBC claims on the Pacific. Or maybe even establish protectorates over somewhere completely different, like Burma.
 
Japan has an historic claim enough, since there's some indication that in the Edo Period they poked around there (but found nothing valuable enough the Ainu couldn't give them). Kamchatka's resources are good enough for Japan, as it adds lots of extra territorial waters and some more mines.

I am not debating in any way but how can any garrison, Japanese or Russian, survive in that harsh winter on the Peninsula. Anton Chekhov the short story novelist claimed that the living conditions in the settlements on the islands was like hell in 1860s. Please be specific about what resources were available on the Peninsula. If there are resources on the Peninsula, how can settlers exploit that? Exploitation of coal and oil resources on the Sakhalin island was already hard enough. Sakhalin Koreans, mostly miners on the island before the end of ww2 suffered so much. Note that there was late 1930s. In the early 19th century before Chekhov's visit, north of the Sakhalin island and way before 1930s, how would settlers survive on the Kamchatka Peninsula?

However, if there are international agreement between Russia and Japan about the status of the Peninsula, like Russian cession of Alaska to the USA, the Peninsula could belong to Russia or Japan. In 1811 in OTL, Russian explorers clashed with Japanese and the Golovnin Incident happened. Why would either side suddenly give up the control of the Peninsula?

May you show that claim to readers?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_the_Kuril_Islands
If logistics was bad, it would be indiscriminately to either side who would settle there. In 1945, Soviet Red Army attacked the Kuril Islands from the Peninsula after the Red Army occupied the whole Sakhalin and parts of Manchuria. Therefore, coasts along the Sea of Japan and the Sakhalin island were more important on military terms than possible launching attack from the Peninsula. During the Soviet era (late 1980s), about or more than half the Peninsula district population was concentrated on the city of Petropavlovsk.
 
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If China, Korea, or Japan underwent Western-style industrialization and modernization earlier in the 19th century, all I can expect is that the Russian Empire will look smaller on maps (to what extent, I'm not certain).
 
If China, Korea, or Japan underwent Western-style industrialization and modernization earlier in the 19th century, all I can expect is that the Russian Empire will look smaller on maps (to what extent, I'm not certain).
Your assumption is that modernization leads to territorial expansion.
 
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