Deportation of Koreans in The Soviet Union - The Deportation

The Deportation

The deportation was preceded by a typical Soviet scenario of political repression: falsified trials of local party leaders accused of insurrection, accusations of plans of the secession of the Far Eastern Krai, local party purges, and articles in Pravda about the Japanese espionage in the Far East.

The deportation was executed by NKVD Troikas of several levels — oblast troikas, raion troikas, and "group" troikas (кустовая тройка) — under strict monitoring of deadlines. Hundreds of party functionaries were purged and repressed for failures in this operation.

The deportation was performed in three batches, graded by the remoteness to the border; the first was the Posyet raion and "raions adjacent to Grodekovo". The deportees were transported by railway trains of about 50 carriages each, with 25–30 people per carriage. Travel to the destination took between 30 and 40 days.

Nikolai Yezhov reported the completion of the deportation of Koreans from Far Eastern Krai on October 25, 1937. In total, 36,442 families counting 171,781 persons were reported to be resettled. The Koreans remaining in Kamchatka, fishermen in the sea, and those on business trips were to be deported in an additional train by November 1. Mikhail N. Pak has suggested that the resolution may have been part of a larger concessionary agreement between the Soviet Union and Japan, due to Japanese perception that the Soviet-Korean community in the Russian Far East presented a threat.