Sakhalin Koreans
Encyclopedia
Sakhalin Koreans are Russian citizens and residents of Korean descent living on Sakhalin Island, who trace their roots to the immigrants from the Gyeongsang
and Jeolla
provinces of Korea
during the late 1930s and early 1940s, the latter half of the Japanese colonial era
. At the time, the southern half of Sakhalin Island, then known as Karafuto Prefecture
, was under the control of the Empire of Japan
; the Japanese government both recruited and forced Korean labourers into service and shipped them to Karafuto to fill labour shortages resulting from World War II
. The Red Army
invaded Karafuto days before Japan's surrender
; while all but a few Japanese there repatriated successfully, almost one-third of the Koreans could not secure permission to depart either to Japan or their home towns in South Korea
. For the next forty years, they lived in exile. In 1985, the Japanese government offered transit rights and funding for the repatriation of the original group of Sakhalin Koreans; however, only 1,500 of them returned to South Korea in the next two decades. The vast majority of Koreans of all generations chose instead to stay on Sakhalin.
Due to differing language and immigration history, Sakhalin Koreans may or may not identify themselves as Koryo-saram
. The term "Koryo-saram" may be used to encompass to all Koreans in the former USSR
, but typically refers to ethnic Koreans from Hamgyŏng
province whose ancestors emigrated to the Russian Far East
in the 19th century, and then were later deported to Central Asia
. The issue of self-identification is complicated by the fact that many Sakhalin Koreans feel that Koreans from Central Asia
look down on them.
Korean immigration to Sakhalin began as early as the 1910s, when the Mitsui Group began recruiting labourers from the peninsula for their mining operations. In 1920, ten years after the annexation of Korea by Japan
, there were fewer than one thousand Koreans in the whole of Karafuto Prefecture, overwhelmingly male. Aside from an influx of refugees from the Maritimes
, who escaped to Karafuto during the Russian Revolution of 1917
, the number of Koreans in the province did not rise very rapidly; as late as the mid 1930s, there were fewer than 6,000 Koreans in Karafuto. However, as Japan's war effort picked up, the Japanese government sought to put more people on the ground in the sparsely-populated prefecture in order to ensure their control of the territory and fill the increasing demands of the coal mines and lumber yards. Recruiters turned to sourcing workers from the Korean peninsula to take advantage of the low wages there; at one point, over 150,000 Koreans worked on the island. Of those, around 10,000 mine workers were relocated to Japan prior to the war's end; present-day Sakhalin Koreans' efforts to locate them proved futile.
The Imperial Japanese Army
in Karafuto frequently used local ethnic minorities (Oroks, Nivkhs, and Ainu
) to conduct intelligence-gathering activities, because, as indigenous inhabitants, their presence would not arouse suspicion on the Soviet half of the island. Ethnic Koreans could also be found on both sides of the border, but the use of Koreans as spies was not common, as the Karafuto police were wary of the support for the independence movement
among Koreans. Soviet suspicion towards Korean nationalism, along with fears that the Korean community might harbour Japanese spies, led to the 1937 deportation of Koreans
from Soviet-controlled northern Sakhalin and the Russian Far East
.
In Kamishisuka, the Japanese police arrested 19 Koreans on charges of spy activities; 18 were found shot within the police station the next day. The sole survivor, a Korean known only by his Japanese name
Nakata, had survived by hiding in a toilet; he later offered testimony about the event. In Mizuho Village, Japanese fleeing Soviet troops who had landed at Maoka (now Kholmsk
) claimed that the Koreans were cooperating with the Red Army and that they were pillaging Japanese property. Though Koreans and Japanese worked alongside each other in the village on farms and construction projects, the Japanese civilians turned against their Korean neighbors, killing 27 between August 20 and 23. Other individual Koreans may have been killed to cover up evidence of Japanese atrocities committed during the evacuation: one woman interviewed by a US-Russian joint commission investigating the issue of Allied prisoners of war held by the Imperial Japanese Army
in camps on Sakhalin reported that her ethnic Korean lover had been murdered by Japanese troops after he had witnessed mass shootings of hundreds of American prisoners of war.
left voluntarily under the auspices of the US-USSR Agreement on Repatriation of those left in the USSR, signed in December 1946. Many of the 150,000 Koreans on the island safely returned to mainland Japan, and some went to the northern half of the Korean peninsula; however, roughly 43,000 were not accepted for repatriation by Japan, and also could not be repatriated to the southern half of the Korean peninsula due to the political situation; Stalin also reportedly blocked their departure because he wanted to retain them as coal miners in Sakhalin. For years, the Sakhalin Koreans were a stateless people forced to stay in Sakhalin. During the late 1940s, their numbers were augmented by another 8,000 North Korean expatriates, recruited by the Soviet government to work in state-owned fisheries. In 1957, Seoul appealed for Tokyo's assistance to secure the departure of ethnic Koreans from Sakhalin via Japan, but Tokyo took no real action on the request, and blamed Soviet intransigence for the lack of progress in resolving the issue; Japan continued its earlier policy of granting entrance only to Sakhalin Koreans who were married to Japanese citizens, or had a Japanese parent.
In an effort to integrate the Korean labourers, who were unfamiliar with the Soviet system and unable to speak Russian, local authorities set up schools using the Korean language as the medium of instruction. However, the Sakhalin Koreans were believed to have been "infected with the Japanese spirit", and so for the most part the authorities did not trust them to run any of their own collective farms, mills, factories, schools, or hospitals. Instead, these tasks were left to several hundred ethnic Koreans imported from Central Asia
, who were bilingual in Russian and Korean. Resentment towards the social dominance of Koreans from Central Asia over the Sakhalin Koreans led to tensions between the two groups; the latter developed a number of disparaging terms in Korean to refer to the former.
The Sakhalin government's policy towards the Sakhalin Koreans continued to shift in line with bilateral relations between North Korea and the Soviet Union. During the 1950s, North Korea
demanded that the Soviets treat Sakhalin Koreans as North Korean citizens
, and, through their consulate, even set up study groups and other educational facilities for them (analogous to Chongryon
's similar, more successful efforts among the Zainichi Koreans). During the late 1950s, it became increasingly difficult for the Sakhalin Koreans to obtain Soviet citizenship, and a growing proportion chose instead to become North Korean citizens rather to than deal with the burdens of remaining stateless, which included severe restrictions on their freedom of movement and the requirement to apply for permission from the local government in order to travel outside of Sakhalin. As of 1960, only 25% had been able to secure Soviet citizenship; 65% had declared North Korean citizenship, with the remaining 10% choosing to remain unaffiliated despite the difficulties this entailed. However, as relations between the Soviet Union and North Korea deteriorated, the authorities acted to de-emphasise Korean language education and reduce the influence of North Korea within the community; by the early 1970s, Sakhalin Koreans were once again encouraged to apply for Soviet citizenship.
Additionally, the Soviet government finally began to permit the Sakhalin Koreans to naturalize. However, as many as 10% continued to refuse both Soviet and North Korean citizenship, and demanded repatriation to South Korea. By 1976, only 2,000 more of their population had been able to obtain permission to depart from Sakhalin, but that year, the Sakhalin government made a public announcement that people seeking to emigrate to South Korea could simply show up at the Immigration Office to file an application. Within a week, they had received more than 800 such applications, including some from North Korean citizens; this caused the North Korean embassy to complain to their Soviet counterparts about the new emigration policy. The Soviet authorities in the end chose for unspecified reasons to refuse to issue exit visas
to most of those concerned, leading to the unusual case of public demonstrations about the refusals by Korean families. This level of open dissent provoked the authorities to completely reverse their liberalising stance towards the Sakhalin Koreans; they arrested more than 40 protestors, and in November 1976 deported them, but to North Korea rather than to the South as they desired. Further purges and intimidation of those seeking to emigrate also followed. Through to the early 1980s, locally-born Korean youth, increasingly interested in their heritage, were seen as traitors
by their Russian neighbours for wanting to know more about their ancestral land and for seeking to emigrate. The nadir of ethnic relations came after the 1983 shooting-down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 by the Soviet Union.
1.2 million a year to fund Sakhalin Koreans' visits to Seoul. The Foreign Ministry allocated about $5 million to build a cultural centre in Sakhalin, which was intended to feature a library, an exhibition hall, Korean language classrooms, and other facilities, but , the project had not begun, causing protests among the Sakhalin Koreans.
On April 18, 1990, Taro Nakayama
, Japan's Minister for Foreign Affairs
, stated:
The foreign trade of Sakhalin with Japan is still roughly four times that with Korea, and Japanese companies greatly outnumber their Korean on the island. As a result, while members of the first generation still carry anti-Japanese sentiment
, the younger generations have developed an interest in Japanese culture and have taken up the study of the Japanese language
, much to the consternation of their elders. On October 28, 2006, a Korean student from the Sakhalin State University
placed second in the All-CIS
Japanese Language Students Competition.
, and the two Koreas began to vie openly for influence among the Sakhalin Koreans. Television and radio programmes from both North and South Korea, as well as local programming, began to be broadcast on Sakhalin Korean Broadcasting, the only Korean television station in all of Russia. North Korea negotiated with Russia for closer economic relations with Sakhalin, and recently sponsored an art show in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
. They have also permitted delegations of Sakhalin Koreans to visit relatives in North Korea. Scholarly studies suggest that roughly 1,000 Sakhalin Koreans have opted to repatriate to North Korea, but the rise of the South Korean economy combined with the ongoing economic and political turmoil in the North have made this option less attractive. Sakhalin Koreans have also provided assistance to refugees fleeing North Korea
, either those who illegally escaped across the border, or those who escaped North Korean labour camps in Russia itself.
South Korea and Japan jointly funded the building of a nursing home for elderly Sakhalin Koreans in Ansan
, a suburb of Seoul
, and under the auspices of the Korean Red Cross, 1,544 people had settled there and in other locations , while another 14,122 had travelled to South Korea on short-term visits at Japanese government expense. South Korean investors also began to participate in the international tenders for works contracts to develop the Sakhalin Shelf, as they are interested in the potential supply of liquefied natural gas
. By the year 2000, South Korean missionaries had opened several churches, and South Koreans comprised the majority of international students at the Sakhalin State University
. The Korean Residents' Association on Sakhalin, an ethnic representative body, is generally described as being pro-South Korean, analogous to Japan's Mindan
. In addition to the elderly, a few younger Koreans have also chosen to move to South Korea, either to find their roots, or for economic reasons, as wages in South Korea are as much as three times those in Sakhalin. However, upon arrival, they often find that they are viewed as foreigners by the South Korean locals, despite their previous exposure to Korean culture in Sakhalin. As one returnee put it, "Sakhalin Koreans live in a different world than Sakhalin Russians but that world isn’t Korea". In general, younger Sakhalin Koreans, especially those lacking fluency in the Korean language, prefer to stay on Sakhalin. Of the 1,544 Koreans who repatriated to South Korea , nearly 10% eventually returned to Sakhalin. Conversely, some foreign students from Korea studying in Sakhalin also reported difficulties in befriending local Koreans, claiming that the latter looked down on them for being foreigners.
and the dissolution of the Soviet Union
, Russians began moving en masse back to the mainland, making ethnic Koreans an increasing proportion of the population; there were fears that they might become a majority of the island's population, and seek an autonomous republic
or even independence. However, the rise of the regional economy and the cultural assimilation of the younger generations drove more than 95% of Koreans to stay in Sakhalin or move to the Russian Far East
rather than leave for South Korea, as they have come to consider Russia their home country. The Sakhalin Koreans' family connections in South Korea have benefitted even those who remained on Sakhalin with easier access to South Korean business and imports; trade with South Korea has brought the Sakhalin Koreans a better economic standing
than the average resident of Sakhalin. By 2004, inter-ethnic resentment between Russians and Koreans had improved greatly and were generally not described as being a problem on Sakhalin. However, Sakhalin Koreans who have travelled to the mainland of Russia, or have relocated to there (a population of roughly 10,000), report that they have encountered various forms of racism.
Among the Koreans who remain on Sakhalin, roughly 7,000 of the original generation of settlers survive, while their locally-born descendants make up the rest of the local Korean population. They are highly urbanized; half live in the administrative center of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
, where Koreans constitute nearly 12% of the population. Around thirty percent of Sakhalin’s thirty thousand Koreans still have not taken Russian citizenship.
Unlike ethnic Russians or other local minority groups, Sakhalin Koreans are exempted from conscription
, but there have been calls for this exemption to be terminated.
Korean surnames, when Cyrillized, may be spelled slightly differently from the romanisations used in the US; the resulting common pronunciations also differ, as can be seen in the table at right. Furthermore, Korean naming practises
and Russian naming practises
conflict in several important ways. While most members of the older generations of Sakhalin Koreans used Korean names, members of the younger generations favor their Russian names. However, with the increasing exposure to South Korean pop culture, some younger Koreans have named their children after characters in Korean television dramas
. The use of patronymic
s is not widespread.
In addition to Korean names, the oldest generation of Sakhalin Koreans are often legally registered under Japanese names, which they had originally adopted due to the sōshi-kaimei
policy of the Japanese colonial era. After the Soviet invasion, the Sakhalin authorities conducted name registration for the local Koreans on the basis of the Japanese identity documents issued by the old Karafuto government; as of 2006, the Russian government uniformly refused requests for re-registration under Korean names.
s. Additionally, during the Soviet era, Sakhalin Koreans were often hired to act as announcers and writers for official media aimed at the Koryo-saram
in Central Asia. However, unlike the Koryo-saram
, the spoken Korean
of Sakhalin is not very closely related to Hamgyŏng dialect
or Koryo-mar
, but is instead descended from Jeolla
and Gyeongsang dialect
s. As a result of the diplomatic situation up until the 1980s, during which South Korea had no relations with the Soviet Union, Korean-language instructional materials were provided by North Korea or developed domestically. Oddly enough, as a result, Sakhalin Koreans' writing, like that of Koryo-saram, follows the North Korean standard, but their spoken Korean in radio broadcasts has come to resemble the Seoul dialect
of South Korea.
, the senior pastor of Manmin Central Church based in Seoul. Korean churches also broadcast religious content through Sakhalin Korean Broadcasting; a Baptist church run by ethnic Koreans sponsors a journalist there. However, large-scale religious events can be subjected to restriction by the government authorities: in June 1998 the local Russian Orthodox Church and the regional administration of Sakhalin successfully pressured Korean Presbyterian missionaries to cancel a conference of more than 100 Presbyterian and other Protestant missionaries from around the former Soviet Union.
Ethnic Koreans are numerous among the church-goers of the Roman Catholic parish of St. James in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Catholic missions in Kholmsk and Aniva have also a fair amount of Korean parishioners.
, a zither
-like instrument supposedly invented around the time of the Gaya confederacy
.
Gyeongsang
Gyeongsang was one of the eight provinces of Korea during the Joseon Dynasty. Gyeongsang was located in the southeast of Korea....
and Jeolla
Jeolla
Jeolla was a province in southwestern Korea, one of the historical Eight Provinces of Korea during the Joseon Dynasty. It consisted of the modern South Korean provinces of North Jeolla, South Jeolla and the Special City of Gwangju as well as Jeju Island...
provinces of Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
during the late 1930s and early 1940s, the latter half of the Japanese colonial era
Korea under Japanese rule
Korea was under Japanese rule as part of Japan's 35-year imperialist expansion . Japanese rule ended in 1945 shortly after the Japanese defeat in World War II....
. At the time, the southern half of Sakhalin Island, then known as Karafuto Prefecture
Karafuto Prefecture
, commonly called South Sakhalin, was the Japanese administrative division corresponding to Japanese territory on Sakhalin from 1905 to 1945. Through the Treaty of Portsmouth, the portion of Sakhalin south of 50°N became a colony of Japan in 1905...
, was under the control of the Empire of Japan
Empire of Japan
The Empire of Japan is the name of the state of Japan that existed from the Meiji Restoration on 3 January 1868 to the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of...
; the Japanese government both recruited and forced Korean labourers into service and shipped them to Karafuto to fill labour shortages resulting from World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
invaded Karafuto days before Japan's surrender
Surrender of Japan
The surrender of Japan in 1945 brought hostilities of World War II to a close. By the end of July 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy was incapable of conducting operations and an Allied invasion of Japan was imminent...
; while all but a few Japanese there repatriated successfully, almost one-third of the Koreans could not secure permission to depart either to Japan or their home towns in South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
. For the next forty years, they lived in exile. In 1985, the Japanese government offered transit rights and funding for the repatriation of the original group of Sakhalin Koreans; however, only 1,500 of them returned to South Korea in the next two decades. The vast majority of Koreans of all generations chose instead to stay on Sakhalin.
Due to differing language and immigration history, Sakhalin Koreans may or may not identify themselves as Koryo-saram
Koryo-saram
Koryo-saram is the name which ethnic Koreans in the post-Soviet states use to refer to themselves. Approximately 500,000 ethnic Koreans reside in the former Soviet Union, primarily in the now-independent states of Central Asia. There are also large Korean communities in southern Russia , the...
. The term "Koryo-saram" may be used to encompass to all Koreans in the former USSR
Post-Soviet states
The post-Soviet states, also commonly known as the Former Soviet Union or former Soviet republics, are the 15 independent states that split off from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in its dissolution in December 1991...
, but typically refers to ethnic Koreans from Hamgyŏng
Hamgyong
Hamgyŏng was one of the Eight Provinces of Korea during the Joseon Dynasty. Hamgyŏng was located in the northeast of Korea. The provincial capital was Hamhŭng.-History:...
province whose ancestors emigrated to the Russian Far East
Russian Far East
Russian Far East is a term that refers to the Russian part of the Far East, i.e., extreme east parts of Russia, between Lake Baikal in Eastern Siberia and the Pacific Ocean...
in the 19th century, and then were later deported to Central Asia
Deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union
Deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union, originally conceived in 1926, initiated in 1930, and carried through in 1937, was the first mass transfer of an entire nationality based on their ethnicity to be committed by the Soviet Union...
. The issue of self-identification is complicated by the fact that many Sakhalin Koreans feel that Koreans from Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
look down on them.
Origins
Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty
The Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910, also known as the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, was made by representatives of the Empire of Japan and the Korean Empire in 1910. Negotiations were concluded on August 20, 1910...
, there were fewer than one thousand Koreans in the whole of Karafuto Prefecture, overwhelmingly male. Aside from an influx of refugees from the Maritimes
Primorsky Krai
Primorsky Krai , informally known as Primorye , is a federal subject of Russia . Primorsky means "maritime" in Russian, hence the region is sometimes referred to as Maritime Province or Maritime Territory. Its administrative center is in the city of Vladivostok...
, who escaped to Karafuto during the Russian Revolution of 1917
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
, the number of Koreans in the province did not rise very rapidly; as late as the mid 1930s, there were fewer than 6,000 Koreans in Karafuto. However, as Japan's war effort picked up, the Japanese government sought to put more people on the ground in the sparsely-populated prefecture in order to ensure their control of the territory and fill the increasing demands of the coal mines and lumber yards. Recruiters turned to sourcing workers from the Korean peninsula to take advantage of the low wages there; at one point, over 150,000 Koreans worked on the island. Of those, around 10,000 mine workers were relocated to Japan prior to the war's end; present-day Sakhalin Koreans' efforts to locate them proved futile.
The Imperial Japanese Army
Imperial Japanese Army
-Foundation:During the Meiji Restoration, the military forces loyal to the Emperor were samurai drawn primarily from the loyalist feudal domains of Satsuma and Chōshū...
in Karafuto frequently used local ethnic minorities (Oroks, Nivkhs, and Ainu
Ainu people
The , also called Aynu, Aino , and in historical texts Ezo , are indigenous people or groups in Japan and Russia. Historically they spoke the Ainu language and related varieties and lived in Hokkaidō, the Kuril Islands, and much of Sakhalin...
) to conduct intelligence-gathering activities, because, as indigenous inhabitants, their presence would not arouse suspicion on the Soviet half of the island. Ethnic Koreans could also be found on both sides of the border, but the use of Koreans as spies was not common, as the Karafuto police were wary of the support for the independence movement
Korean independence movement
The Korean independence movement grew out of the Japanese colonial rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945. After the Japanese surrendered, Korea became independent; that day is now an annual holiday called Gwangbokjeol in South Korea, and Chogukhaebangŭi nal in North Korea.-Background:In...
among Koreans. Soviet suspicion towards Korean nationalism, along with fears that the Korean community might harbour Japanese spies, led to the 1937 deportation of Koreans
Deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union
Deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union, originally conceived in 1926, initiated in 1930, and carried through in 1937, was the first mass transfer of an entire nationality based on their ethnicity to be committed by the Soviet Union...
from Soviet-controlled northern Sakhalin and the Russian Far East
Russian Far East
Russian Far East is a term that refers to the Russian part of the Far East, i.e., extreme east parts of Russia, between Lake Baikal in Eastern Siberia and the Pacific Ocean...
.
Soviet invasion and Japanese massacres
The Soviet Union invaded the Japanese portion of Sakhalin on August 11, 1945, resulting the deaths of 20,000 civilians (see Soviet–Japanese War (1945)). In the confusion that ensued, a rumour began to spread that ethnic Koreans could be serving as spies for the Soviet Union, and led to massacres of Koreans by Japanese police and civilians. Despite the generally limited amount of information about the massacres, two examples of massacres are comparatively well-known today: the incident in Kamishisuka (now Leonidovo) on August 18, 1945, and the incident in Mizuho Village (now Pozharskoye), which lasted from August 20 to August 23, 1945.In Kamishisuka, the Japanese police arrested 19 Koreans on charges of spy activities; 18 were found shot within the police station the next day. The sole survivor, a Korean known only by his Japanese name
Soshi-kaimei
Sōshi-kaimei was a policy created by Jiro Minami, Governor-General of Korea under the Empire of Japan, implemented upon Japanese subjects from Korea . As defined by Ordinance No...
Nakata, had survived by hiding in a toilet; he later offered testimony about the event. In Mizuho Village, Japanese fleeing Soviet troops who had landed at Maoka (now Kholmsk
Kholmsk
Kholmsk is a town in Sakhalin Oblast, Russia, the administrative center of Kholmsky District. Population: 35,141 .-History:The town was founded in 1870 as a military post. After the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, the town was transferred to Japanese control, along with the rest of southern...
) claimed that the Koreans were cooperating with the Red Army and that they were pillaging Japanese property. Though Koreans and Japanese worked alongside each other in the village on farms and construction projects, the Japanese civilians turned against their Korean neighbors, killing 27 between August 20 and 23. Other individual Koreans may have been killed to cover up evidence of Japanese atrocities committed during the evacuation: one woman interviewed by a US-Russian joint commission investigating the issue of Allied prisoners of war held by the Imperial Japanese Army
Imperial Japanese Army
-Foundation:During the Meiji Restoration, the military forces loyal to the Emperor were samurai drawn primarily from the loyalist feudal domains of Satsuma and Chōshū...
in camps on Sakhalin reported that her ethnic Korean lover had been murdered by Japanese troops after he had witnessed mass shootings of hundreds of American prisoners of war.
Repatriation refused
In the years after the Soviet invasion, most of the 400,000 Japanese civilians who had not already been evacuated during the warEvacuation of Karafuto and Kuriles
The evacuation of Karafuto and the Kuriles refers to the events that took place during the Pacific theater of World War II as the Japanese population left these areas, to August 1945 in the northwest of the main islands of Japan....
left voluntarily under the auspices of the US-USSR Agreement on Repatriation of those left in the USSR, signed in December 1946. Many of the 150,000 Koreans on the island safely returned to mainland Japan, and some went to the northern half of the Korean peninsula; however, roughly 43,000 were not accepted for repatriation by Japan, and also could not be repatriated to the southern half of the Korean peninsula due to the political situation; Stalin also reportedly blocked their departure because he wanted to retain them as coal miners in Sakhalin. For years, the Sakhalin Koreans were a stateless people forced to stay in Sakhalin. During the late 1940s, their numbers were augmented by another 8,000 North Korean expatriates, recruited by the Soviet government to work in state-owned fisheries. In 1957, Seoul appealed for Tokyo's assistance to secure the departure of ethnic Koreans from Sakhalin via Japan, but Tokyo took no real action on the request, and blamed Soviet intransigence for the lack of progress in resolving the issue; Japan continued its earlier policy of granting entrance only to Sakhalin Koreans who were married to Japanese citizens, or had a Japanese parent.
In an effort to integrate the Korean labourers, who were unfamiliar with the Soviet system and unable to speak Russian, local authorities set up schools using the Korean language as the medium of instruction. However, the Sakhalin Koreans were believed to have been "infected with the Japanese spirit", and so for the most part the authorities did not trust them to run any of their own collective farms, mills, factories, schools, or hospitals. Instead, these tasks were left to several hundred ethnic Koreans imported from Central Asia
Koryo-saram
Koryo-saram is the name which ethnic Koreans in the post-Soviet states use to refer to themselves. Approximately 500,000 ethnic Koreans reside in the former Soviet Union, primarily in the now-independent states of Central Asia. There are also large Korean communities in southern Russia , the...
, who were bilingual in Russian and Korean. Resentment towards the social dominance of Koreans from Central Asia over the Sakhalin Koreans led to tensions between the two groups; the latter developed a number of disparaging terms in Korean to refer to the former.
The Sakhalin government's policy towards the Sakhalin Koreans continued to shift in line with bilateral relations between North Korea and the Soviet Union. During the 1950s, North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
demanded that the Soviets treat Sakhalin Koreans as North Korean citizens
Nationality Law of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
The nationality law of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea governs who is a citizen of the DPRK, and how one may gain or lose such citizenship.-History:Up until 1963, the DPRK had no formal nationality law...
, and, through their consulate, even set up study groups and other educational facilities for them (analogous to Chongryon
Chongryon
The General Association of Korean Residents in Japan , abbreviated to Chongryon The General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chae Ilbon Chosŏnin Ch'ongryŏnhaphoe in Korean or Zai-Nihon Chōsenjin Sōrengōkai in Japanese), abbreviated to Chongryon The General Association of Korean Residents...
's similar, more successful efforts among the Zainichi Koreans). During the late 1950s, it became increasingly difficult for the Sakhalin Koreans to obtain Soviet citizenship, and a growing proportion chose instead to become North Korean citizens rather to than deal with the burdens of remaining stateless, which included severe restrictions on their freedom of movement and the requirement to apply for permission from the local government in order to travel outside of Sakhalin. As of 1960, only 25% had been able to secure Soviet citizenship; 65% had declared North Korean citizenship, with the remaining 10% choosing to remain unaffiliated despite the difficulties this entailed. However, as relations between the Soviet Union and North Korea deteriorated, the authorities acted to de-emphasise Korean language education and reduce the influence of North Korea within the community; by the early 1970s, Sakhalin Koreans were once again encouraged to apply for Soviet citizenship.
Attention from the outside world
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the situation of the Sakhalin Koreans improved as the outside world began to pay much more attention to their situation. Starting in 1966, Park No Hak, a former Sakhalin Korean who had earlier received permission to leave Sakhalin and settle in Japan by virtue of his having a Japanese wife, petitioned the Japanese government a total of 23 times to discuss the issue of the Sakhalin Koreans with the Soviet government. His actions inspired 500,000 South Koreans to form an organisation to work towards the repatriation of their co-ethnics; in response, the South Korean began radio broadcasts targeted at the Sakhalin Koreans, in an effort to ensure them that they had not been forgotten. At the same time, Rei Mihara, a Tokyo housewife, formed a similar pressure group in Japan, and 18 Japanese lawyers attempted to sue the Japanese government to force them to accept diplomatic and financial responsibility for the transportation of the Sakhalin Koreans and their return to South Korea.Additionally, the Soviet government finally began to permit the Sakhalin Koreans to naturalize. However, as many as 10% continued to refuse both Soviet and North Korean citizenship, and demanded repatriation to South Korea. By 1976, only 2,000 more of their population had been able to obtain permission to depart from Sakhalin, but that year, the Sakhalin government made a public announcement that people seeking to emigrate to South Korea could simply show up at the Immigration Office to file an application. Within a week, they had received more than 800 such applications, including some from North Korean citizens; this caused the North Korean embassy to complain to their Soviet counterparts about the new emigration policy. The Soviet authorities in the end chose for unspecified reasons to refuse to issue exit visas
Refusenik (Soviet Union)
Refusenik was an unofficial term for individuals, typically but not exclusively, Soviet Jews, who were denied permission to emigrate abroad by the authorities of the former Soviet Union and other countries of the Eastern bloc...
to most of those concerned, leading to the unusual case of public demonstrations about the refusals by Korean families. This level of open dissent provoked the authorities to completely reverse their liberalising stance towards the Sakhalin Koreans; they arrested more than 40 protestors, and in November 1976 deported them, but to North Korea rather than to the South as they desired. Further purges and intimidation of those seeking to emigrate also followed. Through to the early 1980s, locally-born Korean youth, increasingly interested in their heritage, were seen as traitors
Dual loyalty
In politics, dual loyalty is loyalty to two separate interests that potentially conflict with each other.-Inherently controversial:While nearly all examples of alleged "dual loyalty" are considered highly controversial, these examples point to the inherent difficulty in distinguishing between what...
by their Russian neighbours for wanting to know more about their ancestral land and for seeking to emigrate. The nadir of ethnic relations came after the 1983 shooting-down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 by the Soviet Union.
Improving relations with Japan
In 1985, Japan agreed to approve transit rights and fund the repatriation of the first generation of Sakhalin Koreans; the Soviet Union also began to liberalize their emigration laws in 1987. As of 2001, Japan spends US$United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
1.2 million a year to fund Sakhalin Koreans' visits to Seoul. The Foreign Ministry allocated about $5 million to build a cultural centre in Sakhalin, which was intended to feature a library, an exhibition hall, Korean language classrooms, and other facilities, but , the project had not begun, causing protests among the Sakhalin Koreans.
On April 18, 1990, Taro Nakayama
Taro Nakayama
is a Japanese doctor and politician serving in the House of Representatives in the Diet as a member of the Liberal Democratic Party. A native of Osaka he received a Ph.D in medicine from Osaka Medical College in 1960 for the study of infantile paralysis...
, Japan's Minister for Foreign Affairs
Minister for Foreign Affairs (Japan)
The of Japan is the Cabinet member responsible for Japanese foreign policy and the chief executive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.Since the end of the American occupation of Japan, the position has been one of the most powerful in the Cabinet, as Japan's economic interests have long relied on...
, stated:
- "Japan is deeply sorry for the tragedy in which these (Korean) people were moved to Sakhalin not of their own free will but by the design of the Japanese government and had to remain there after the conclusion of the war".
The foreign trade of Sakhalin with Japan is still roughly four times that with Korea, and Japanese companies greatly outnumber their Korean on the island. As a result, while members of the first generation still carry anti-Japanese sentiment
Anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea
The Anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea is complex and multi-faceted. Anti-Japanese sentiment attitudes in the Korea can be traced back to the effects of Japanese pirate raids and the Japanese invasions of Korea , such as dismembering more than 20,000 noses and ears from Koreans and bringing them back...
, the younger generations have developed an interest in Japanese culture and have taken up the study of the Japanese language
Japanese language education in Russia
Japanese language education in Russia formally dates back to December 1701 or January 1702, when Dembei, a shipwrecked Japanese merchant, was taken to Moscow and ordered to begin teaching the language as soon as possible...
, much to the consternation of their elders. On October 28, 2006, a Korean student from the Sakhalin State University
Sakhalin State University
Sakhalin State University is a university located in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Sakhalin. It maintains a sister school relationship with South Korea's Dongseo University...
placed second in the All-CIS
Commonwealth of Independent States
The Commonwealth of Independent States is a regional organization whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics, formed during the breakup of the Soviet Union....
Japanese Language Students Competition.
North and South Korean influence
During the 1990s, commerce, communication, and direct flights opened up between Sakhalin and South KoreaSouth Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
, and the two Koreas began to vie openly for influence among the Sakhalin Koreans. Television and radio programmes from both North and South Korea, as well as local programming, began to be broadcast on Sakhalin Korean Broadcasting, the only Korean television station in all of Russia. North Korea negotiated with Russia for closer economic relations with Sakhalin, and recently sponsored an art show in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
-Demographics:Most residents are ethnic Russians, but there also exists a sizable population of Koreans. Of the 43,000 Sakhalin Koreans, half are estimated to live in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, comprising roughly 12% of the city's population...
. They have also permitted delegations of Sakhalin Koreans to visit relatives in North Korea. Scholarly studies suggest that roughly 1,000 Sakhalin Koreans have opted to repatriate to North Korea, but the rise of the South Korean economy combined with the ongoing economic and political turmoil in the North have made this option less attractive. Sakhalin Koreans have also provided assistance to refugees fleeing North Korea
North Korean defectors
A number of individuals have defected from North Korea. Since the division of Korea after World War II and the end of the Korean War , many people have defected from North Korea, mainly for political, ideological, religious and economic reasons...
, either those who illegally escaped across the border, or those who escaped North Korean labour camps in Russia itself.
South Korea and Japan jointly funded the building of a nursing home for elderly Sakhalin Koreans in Ansan
Ansan
Ansan is a city in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. It lies south of Seoul, and is part of the Seoul National Capital Area. It is connected to Seoul by rail via Seoul Subway Line 4....
, a suburb of Seoul
Seoul National Capital Area
The Seoul National Capital Area is a region located in the north-west of South Korea. It is generally referred to as Sudogwon in Korean, and contains three different administrative districts; Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi-do....
, and under the auspices of the Korean Red Cross, 1,544 people had settled there and in other locations , while another 14,122 had travelled to South Korea on short-term visits at Japanese government expense. South Korean investors also began to participate in the international tenders for works contracts to develop the Sakhalin Shelf, as they are interested in the potential supply of liquefied natural gas
Liquefied natural gas
Liquefied natural gas or LNG is natural gas that has been converted temporarily to liquid form for ease of storage or transport....
. By the year 2000, South Korean missionaries had opened several churches, and South Koreans comprised the majority of international students at the Sakhalin State University
Sakhalin State University
Sakhalin State University is a university located in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Sakhalin. It maintains a sister school relationship with South Korea's Dongseo University...
. The Korean Residents' Association on Sakhalin, an ethnic representative body, is generally described as being pro-South Korean, analogous to Japan's Mindan
Mindan
Mindan , or the Korean Residents Union in Japan, is the name of one of two main organizations for Koreans living in Japan, the other being Chongryon. Mindan has ties to South Korea and was established in 1946 in Tokyo, Japan...
. In addition to the elderly, a few younger Koreans have also chosen to move to South Korea, either to find their roots, or for economic reasons, as wages in South Korea are as much as three times those in Sakhalin. However, upon arrival, they often find that they are viewed as foreigners by the South Korean locals, despite their previous exposure to Korean culture in Sakhalin. As one returnee put it, "Sakhalin Koreans live in a different world than Sakhalin Russians but that world isn’t Korea". In general, younger Sakhalin Koreans, especially those lacking fluency in the Korean language, prefer to stay on Sakhalin. Of the 1,544 Koreans who repatriated to South Korea , nearly 10% eventually returned to Sakhalin. Conversely, some foreign students from Korea studying in Sakhalin also reported difficulties in befriending local Koreans, claiming that the latter looked down on them for being foreigners.
Local interethnic relations
In the late 1980s, suspicions against the Sakhalin Koreans remained. With the relaxation of internal migration controlsPropiska
Propiska was both a residence permit and migration recording tool in the Russian Empire before 1917 and from 1930s in the Soviet Union. It was documented in local police registers and certified with a stamp in internal passports....
and the dissolution of the Soviet Union
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union was the disintegration of the federal political structures and central government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , resulting in the independence of all fifteen republics of the Soviet Union between March 11, 1990 and December 25, 1991...
, Russians began moving en masse back to the mainland, making ethnic Koreans an increasing proportion of the population; there were fears that they might become a majority of the island's population, and seek an autonomous republic
Republics of Russia
The Russian Federation is divided into 83 federal subjects , 21 of which are republics. The republics represent areas of non-Russian ethnicity. The indigenous ethnic group of a republic that gives it its name is referred to as the "titular nationality"...
or even independence. However, the rise of the regional economy and the cultural assimilation of the younger generations drove more than 95% of Koreans to stay in Sakhalin or move to the Russian Far East
Russian Far East
Russian Far East is a term that refers to the Russian part of the Far East, i.e., extreme east parts of Russia, between Lake Baikal in Eastern Siberia and the Pacific Ocean...
rather than leave for South Korea, as they have come to consider Russia their home country. The Sakhalin Koreans' family connections in South Korea have benefitted even those who remained on Sakhalin with easier access to South Korean business and imports; trade with South Korea has brought the Sakhalin Koreans a better economic standing
Model minority
Model minority refers to a minority ethnic, racial, or religious group whose members achieve a higher degree of success than the population average. It is most commonly used to label one ethnic minority higher achieving than another ethnic minority...
than the average resident of Sakhalin. By 2004, inter-ethnic resentment between Russians and Koreans had improved greatly and were generally not described as being a problem on Sakhalin. However, Sakhalin Koreans who have travelled to the mainland of Russia, or have relocated to there (a population of roughly 10,000), report that they have encountered various forms of racism.
Among the Koreans who remain on Sakhalin, roughly 7,000 of the original generation of settlers survive, while their locally-born descendants make up the rest of the local Korean population. They are highly urbanized; half live in the administrative center of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
-Demographics:Most residents are ethnic Russians, but there also exists a sizable population of Koreans. Of the 43,000 Sakhalin Koreans, half are estimated to live in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, comprising roughly 12% of the city's population...
, where Koreans constitute nearly 12% of the population. Around thirty percent of Sakhalin’s thirty thousand Koreans still have not taken Russian citizenship.
Unlike ethnic Russians or other local minority groups, Sakhalin Koreans are exempted from conscription
Conscription in Russia
Conscription in Russia is presently a 12 month draft, mandatory for all male citizens age 18-27, with a number of exceptions. The mandatory term of service was reduced from 18 months at the beginning of 2008.- Russian Empire and earlier times :...
, but there have been calls for this exemption to be terminated.
Personal and family names
- See also List of Korean family names and Cyrillization of Korean.
Korean surnames, when Cyrillized, may be spelled slightly differently from the romanisations used in the US; the resulting common pronunciations also differ, as can be seen in the table at right. Furthermore, Korean naming practises
Korean name
A Korean name consists of a family name followed by a given name, as used by the Korean people in both North Korea and South Korea. In the Korean language, 'ireum' or 'seong-myeong' usually refers to the family name and given name together...
and Russian naming practises
Names in Russian Empire, Soviet Union and CIS countries
The Eastern Slavic naming customs are the traditions for determining a person's name in countries influenced by East Slavic linguistic tradition. This relates to modern Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and Kazakhstan...
conflict in several important ways. While most members of the older generations of Sakhalin Koreans used Korean names, members of the younger generations favor their Russian names. However, with the increasing exposure to South Korean pop culture, some younger Koreans have named their children after characters in Korean television dramas
Korean drama
Korean drama refers to televised dramas, in a miniseries format, produced in the Korean language. Many of these dramas have become popular throughout Asia and have contributed to the general phenomenon of the Korean wave, known as "Hallyu", and also "Drama Fever" in some countries...
. The use of patronymic
Patronymic
A patronym, or patronymic, is a component of a personal name based on the name of one's father, grandfather or an even earlier male ancestor. A component of a name based on the name of one's mother or a female ancestor is a matronymic. Each is a means of conveying lineage.In many areas patronyms...
s is not widespread.
In addition to Korean names, the oldest generation of Sakhalin Koreans are often legally registered under Japanese names, which they had originally adopted due to the sōshi-kaimei
Soshi-kaimei
Sōshi-kaimei was a policy created by Jiro Minami, Governor-General of Korea under the Empire of Japan, implemented upon Japanese subjects from Korea . As defined by Ordinance No...
policy of the Japanese colonial era. After the Soviet invasion, the Sakhalin authorities conducted name registration for the local Koreans on the basis of the Japanese identity documents issued by the old Karafuto government; as of 2006, the Russian government uniformly refused requests for re-registration under Korean names.
Language
Due to their greater population density and expectation that they would one day be allowed to return to Korea, the Sakhalin Koreans have kept something of a sojourner mentality rather than a settler mentality, which influenced their relation to the surrounding society; even today, they tend to speak much better Korean than those who were deported to Central Asia. A weekly Korean language newspaper, the Saegoryeo Shinmun (새고려 신문), has been published since 1949, while Sakhalin Korean Broadcasting began operation in 1956. Korean-language television programmes are broadcast locally, but typically with Russian subtitleSubtitle (captioning)
Subtitles are textual versions of the dialog in films and television programs, usually displayed at the bottom of the screen. They can either be a form of written translation of a dialog in a foreign language, or a written rendering of the dialog in the same language, with or without added...
s. Additionally, during the Soviet era, Sakhalin Koreans were often hired to act as announcers and writers for official media aimed at the Koryo-saram
Koryo-saram
Koryo-saram is the name which ethnic Koreans in the post-Soviet states use to refer to themselves. Approximately 500,000 ethnic Koreans reside in the former Soviet Union, primarily in the now-independent states of Central Asia. There are also large Korean communities in southern Russia , the...
in Central Asia. However, unlike the Koryo-saram
Koryo-saram
Koryo-saram is the name which ethnic Koreans in the post-Soviet states use to refer to themselves. Approximately 500,000 ethnic Koreans reside in the former Soviet Union, primarily in the now-independent states of Central Asia. There are also large Korean communities in southern Russia , the...
, the spoken Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
of Sakhalin is not very closely related to Hamgyŏng dialect
Hamgyong dialect
Hamgyŏng dialect is a dialect of the Korean language used in the North Hamgyŏng, South Hamgyŏng, and Ryanggang Provinces of North Korea, as well as the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of northeast China...
or Koryo-mar
Koryo-mar
Koryo-mar, Goryeomal or Koryŏmal is the dialect of the Korean language spoken by the Koryo-saram, ethnic Koreans in the former USSR. It is descended from the Hamgyŏng dialect...
, but is instead descended from Jeolla
Jeolla dialect
Jeolla dialect is used in the Jeolla region of South Korea, including the city of Gwangju.Along with Chungcheong dialect, it is considered non-standard by some Koreans. Perhaps the most obvious difference comes from common verb endings...
and Gyeongsang dialect
Gyeongsang dialect
The Gyeongsang dialect is a dialect of the Korean language which is widely used in the Yeongnam region, which includes North and South Gyeongsang provinces. The Gyeongsang Dialect is considered the direct descendant of the Silla language by Korean linguists...
s. As a result of the diplomatic situation up until the 1980s, during which South Korea had no relations with the Soviet Union, Korean-language instructional materials were provided by North Korea or developed domestically. Oddly enough, as a result, Sakhalin Koreans' writing, like that of Koryo-saram, follows the North Korean standard, but their spoken Korean in radio broadcasts has come to resemble the Seoul dialect
Seoul dialect
The Seoul dialect is the basis of the standard language of Korean in South Korea. It is spoken in the Seoul National Capital Area, which includes Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi. The dialect does not merely mean 'a standard accent'. The exact form of the South Korea's standard accent is that of...
of South Korea.
Religion
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there has been significant growth in religious activities among the Sakhalin Koreans; the establishment of churches was noted in scholarly articles as early as 1990. Christian hymns have become popular listening material, supplementing the more typical Russian, Western, and Korean pop music. The Saegoryeo Shinmun regularly publishes sermons written by the renowned South Korean evangelist Dr. Jaerock LeeJaerock Lee
Jaerock Lee is a Christian author and the senior pastor of the Manmin Central Church in Seoul. Manmin means ‘all creation; all the nations; all the people.’ So, he says, the ministry of Manmin is to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all nations and to all the people of God’s creation...
, the senior pastor of Manmin Central Church based in Seoul. Korean churches also broadcast religious content through Sakhalin Korean Broadcasting; a Baptist church run by ethnic Koreans sponsors a journalist there. However, large-scale religious events can be subjected to restriction by the government authorities: in June 1998 the local Russian Orthodox Church and the regional administration of Sakhalin successfully pressured Korean Presbyterian missionaries to cancel a conference of more than 100 Presbyterian and other Protestant missionaries from around the former Soviet Union.
Ethnic Koreans are numerous among the church-goers of the Roman Catholic parish of St. James in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Catholic missions in Kholmsk and Aniva have also a fair amount of Korean parishioners.
Music
In one survey, a third of the Sakhalin Korean population expressed a preference for traditional Korean music, a far higher proportion than in any other ethnic Korean community surveyed. However, despite their better knowledge of Korean language, the same survey showed that Korean pop music is less widespread among Sakhalin Koreans than among ethnic Koreans in Kazakhstan, possessing about the same degree of popularity as in Uzbekistan. Sakhalin Koreans also reported listening to Western popular and classical music at much lower rates than Koreans in the rest of the former Soviet Union. Study of traditional Korean musical instruments has also been gaining popularity across all generations. The Ethnos Arts School was established in 1991 in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to teach children's classes in traditional Korean dance, piano, sight singing, and the gayageumGayageum
The gayageum or kayagum is a traditional Korean zither-like string instrument, with 12 strings, although more recently variants have been constructed with 21 or other numbers of strings. It is probably the best known traditional Korean musical instrument...
, a zither
Zither
The zither is a musical string instrument, most commonly found in Slovenia, Austria, Hungary citera, northwestern Croatia, the southern regions of Germany, alpine Europe and East Asian cultures, including China...
-like instrument supposedly invented around the time of the Gaya confederacy
Gaya confederacy
Gaya was a confederacy of territorial polities in the Nakdong River basin of southern Korea, growing out of the Byeonhan confederacy of the Samhan period.The traditional period used by historians for Gaya chronology is 42–532 CE...
.
Prominent Sakhalin Koreans
- Park Hae Yong, head of the Korean Residents' Association on Sakhalin
- Kim Chun Ja, editor in chief of Sakhalin Korean Broadcasting
- Lee HoesungLee HoesungLee Hoesung is a Zainichi Korean novelist in Japan. In 1972, he became the first ethnic Korean to win the Akutagawa Prize. Other representative works of his include Mihatenu Yume and Hyakunenno tabibitotachi .-Biography:Lee was born in 1935 to Korean immigrant parents in Maoka, Karafuto Prefecture...
, Zainichi Korean author, born in Karafuto and later repatriated to Japan - Nellie KimNellie KimNellie Vladimirovna Kim is a retired Soviet gymnast who won three gold medals and a silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, and two gold medals at the 1980 Summer Olympics...
, world and Olympic champion in artistic gymnasticsArtistic gymnasticsArtistic gymnastics is a discipline of gymnastics where gymnasts perform short routines on different apparatus, with less time for vaulting . The sport is governed by the Federation Internationale de Gymnastique , which designs the Code of Points and regulates all aspects of international elite...
See also
- Russia–South Korea relationsRussia–South Korea relationsRussia–South Korea relations refers to the bilateral foreign relations between Russia and South Korea.Immediately following Japan's 1910-1945 occupation of Korea, the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States created the division of Korea into North and South states...
- Chinese people in RussiaChinese people in RussiaEthnic Chinese in Russia officially numbered 34,578 according to the 2002 census. However, this figure is contested, with the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission of the Republic of China on Taiwan claiming 998,000 in 2004 and 2005, and Russian demographers generally accepting estimates in the...
- Japanese people in RussiaJapanese people in RussiaJapanese people in Russia form a small part of the worldwide community of Nikkeijin. They count various notable political figures among their number.-Early settlement:...
- Russians in KoreaRussians in KoreaRussians in Korea do not form a very large population, but they have a history going back to the era of the Korean Empire. The community of Russian subjects/citizens in Korea has historically included not just ethnic Russians, but members of minority groups of Russia as well, such as Tatars, Poles,...