Soviet Persecution Of Koreans

Koreans began immigrating to the Soviet Union after 1860.

In the 1920s, Korean population in the Russian Far East (pictured) stood at an estimated 250,000.

According to Jeanyoung Lee, "the motivation of the Korean immigration to Russia at that time was the same as that of the Korean immigrants in Manchuria, to escape hunger and the Japanese rule in Korea." (Ethnic Korean Migration in Northeast Asia)

Russian citizenship was allowed, and by 1914, about a third of the Korean immigrants had become Russian citizens.

"Unlike in Manchuria, there were visible signs of successful assimilation of Koreans into the Russian communities. Many were converted to the Orthodox Church and Russified their names," Lee wrote, adding that "the Sovietization of the Koreans were completed in 1920."

But it was during this period that the Koreans sent a petition for the establishment of a Far Eastern Korean People's Republic to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

The move was said to be influenced by the decision of the Soviet government to form the Jewish Autonomous Republic in Birobidzhan.

The petition was denied in 1929.

Along with the petition, some Korean farmers protested and clashed with Russians over better agricultural machinery and more land that were received by Russian collective farms.

The Soviet local government was also alarmed by the waves of Korean and Chinese immigrants into the Soviet Far East.

Hence, by the early 1930s, Stalin labelled Koreans and other ethnic minorities "class enemies" and forcibly transferred them to labor camps.

It was not until 1936 that the migration of Koreans to Central Asia became massive. At least 118,000 Koreans were forced to move to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. By 1939, the number of Koreans in Central Asia had reached 182,300.

Before the transfer, the Soviet government executed more than 2,500 Korean Communists, mostly leaders of the Korean community in the Far East.