National Delimitation in The Soviet Union - Korean Minorities: A Failed Delimitation

Korean Minorities: A Failed Delimitation

The Korean minority population in the Russian Far East was one of the largest border minorities in the Soviet Union, facing in the 1920s and the 1930s the Japanese-occupied Korea on the other side. This minority had been gradually building up since the second half of the 19th century, as poor Korean peasants migrated across the border in search for land and livelihoods. The Korean immigration increased dramatically during the early 1920s, after the Japanese occupied Korea. From 1917 to 1926 the Soviet Korean population tripled to nearly 170,000 people, and by 1926 Koreans represented more than a quarter of the rural population of the Vladivostok region. Declared Soviet policy toward national minorities demanded the formation of a Korean autonomous territory for the large Korean community in the Russian Far East. The option of establishing a Korean ASSR in the Far East was seriously debated in Moscow but finally rejected in 1925 because of opposition from the local Russian population who feared competition for land and the political goal of maintaining a peaceful stance toward the Japanese. As a result, a contradictory policy emerged. On the one hand, smaller Korean national territories were authorized, with Korean-language schools and newspapers, and the policy line represented Koreans as a model Soviet national minority contrasted with the Korean population suffering under the yoke of Japanese occupation across the border. On the other hand, the central government confirmed a plan (6 December 1926) to resettle half of the Soviet Koreans (88,000 people) north of Khabarovsk on suspicions of disloyalty to the Soviet Union. However, the northward resettlement plan had not been implemented by 1928 for a variety of political and budgetary reasons. By 1931, when the plan was officially abandoned, only 500 Korean families (2,500 individuals) had been resettled in the north.

The resettlement plans were revived with new vigor in August 1937, ostensibly with the purpose of suppressing "the penetration of the Japanese espionage into the Far Eastern Krai". This time, however, the direction of resettlement was westward, to Soviet Central Asia. From September to October 1937, more than 172,000 of Soviet Koreans were deported from the border regions of the Russian Far East to Kazakh SSR and Uzbek SSR (the latter including Karakalpak ASSR). The deportees expected a Korean ASSR to be created in Central Asia, but they never received a national territory, although the deported Koreans were settled in separate Korean collective farms with Korean-language schools, a Korean publishing house, a Korean newspaper for all of Central Asia, and even a Korean teachers' college. A significant population of ethnic Koreans still exists in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.