Page 1 of 2 Koreans left high and dry
By Andrei Lankov
YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK - While walking the streets of this Russian city, the capital
of Sakhalin Island, a large, nearly 1,000-kilometer-long sliver of land in the
north Pacific, one clearly sees manifold signs of the Korean presence.
This is not only because of the billboards advertising big Korean eateries;
many people are ethnic Koreans, forming over 10% of the city population of
about 185,000 people. They are present due to an unusual set of circumstances,
not widely known outside their community.
Just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1989, there were some 450,000
ethnic Koreans in this huge country. Most of them
then lived in Central Asia. Ethnic Koreans of the ex-Soviet Central Asia are
descendants of the poor farmers who in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
moved to Russia from Korea's northern provinces. They went there because land
was plentiful and taxes were light.
During the 1917 Russian revolution and subsequent civil war, ethnic Koreans
overwhelmingly supported the communists, but in 1937 they were deemed
politically unreliable and forcefully relocated from the border with Japan
(leader Joseph Stalin and his advisers were afraid that in case of war with
Japan, the ethnic Koreans would side with the Japanese). They were then settled
in Central Asia.
However, the story of the Sakhalin Koreans is completely different. These
people did not come to a foreign country to adopt new citizenship. It was the
land which changed its ownership, suddenly making them inhabitants of a
strange, alien region.
The story of the Sakhalin Koreans began in 1905, when the Japanese Empire,
having won a war with Russia, came into possession of the southern half of
Sakhalin. The area was rich with coal, while adjacent seas were famous for
fisheries. There was plenty of timber, too. The mines and fisheries had high
demand for labor, so from around 1930 the Japanese authorities began to recruit
unskilled and semi-skilled workers in Korea, then a Japanese colony.
People were lured by high wages: in 1940, when the semi-skilled monthly wage in
Korea averaged some 15-20 yen, a good miner could earn 80-100 yen at a Sakhalin
coal mine. For a farmer's son, it was a fortune (if he was lucky to receive
this money - delays with payments became a rule when the war began, and the
Sakhalin Koreans still wage a legal battle to recover their long-overdue
wages).
From about 1940, Koreans began to be sent to the island as forced laborers as
well. Most of the Koreans workers came from what is now South Korea, since
inhabitants of northern provinces were usually recruited to work in Manchuria,
then also a Japanese dependency. Therefore, by the time of the Soviet takeover
in 1945, there were some 25,000 Koreans on the island.
In August 1945, Japan was defeated and Southern Sakhalin overnight became
Soviet territory. Soon after the takeover, it became clear that the entire
Japanese population - numbering some 380,000 - was to be expelled from the
island by its new owners. At first, Koreans believed that they would also go
home. Indeed, many of them assumed that the new Soviet administration would
send Koreans first, since they were victims of Japanese imperialism, presumably
eligible for preferential treatment.
Therefore, in 1946 a number of Korean families moved to Korsakov and other port
cities of the island's southern coast. There were persistent rumors that ships
would soon arrive to take them home, so they wanted to be first to board these
ships. The ships never came.
The Soviet policy in Sakhalin soon became clear: all Japanese were required to
leave the island, but no Koreans were allowed to go. Currently available
documents do not explain why this decision was made in 1945. However, by 1947,
as the political division in Korea deepened, it became politically impossible
for Moscow to send the Sakhalin Koreans back to their native villages in South
Korea: a large-scale population transfer to the territories under control of a
militantly anti-communist Seoul government would damage the international
reputation of socialism.
Hence, Koreans could only watch on as their Japanese neighbors went to
repatriation camps and then boarded ships to Japan. Some Koreans tried to pass
themselves off as Japanese, but the officials were good at distinguishing a
Japanese from a Korean. The instructions made clear: no ethnic Koreans should
be allowed to board the departing ships.
In dealing with mixed families, the Soviets allowed Japanese spouses to leave,
but without their Korean family members. At the same time, the Japanese spouses
of ethnic Koreans were among the few Japanese who were allowed to stay in
Sakhalin if they wished to.
In 1952, the Japanese government formally deprived all ethnic Koreans of their
Japanese citizenship - even though for all practical purposes both Soviet and
Japanese governments since 1945 had treated Sakhalin Koreans as if they were
not Japanese citizens. A vast majority of the Sakhalin Koreans found themselves
in an unusual legal limbo; they had no citizenship whatsoever.
In the late 1940s, two new large groups of Koreans arrived on the island,
greatly influencing the composition of the community. First of all, there were
new arrivals from North Korea. The departure of the Japanese meant the loss of
labor, with fisheries suffering most. Russian laborers were not too eager to
come to the remote island, so Moscow found a solution: in 1946-1947, the Soviet
authorities in North Korean began to recruit workers to go to Sakhalin
fisheries.
The number of these arrivals from North Korea was large: in December 1947, for
example, in the island there were 5,600 North Korean workers, and soon their
numbers increased, peaking at some 12,000-13,000. The length of their contracts
was usually one or three years, but they were not in a hurry to go home after
their contacts expired.
Then, a number of Koreans came from Central Asia. The Sakhalin authorities felt
uneasy about numerous Koreans, almost none of whom spoke Russian. These
Sakhalin Koreans also had another shortcoming: they had not been exposed to
Soviet-style "ideological education".
Their children could attend only Korean schools, but these schools had no
politically reliable teachers who could deliver an ideologically wholesome
message to the students. Therefore, to manage the local Koreans, the Soviet
authorities badly needed intermediaries, interpreters and educators. Qualified
people were found far away, in Central Asia, where the Korean population was
much more Russified culturally and also, despite the 1937 relocation and
palpable discrimination, had a number of devoted communists.
In the late 1940s, some 2,000 Koreans from Central Asia were selected to work
at Sakhalin. They became interpreters and translators who facilitated contacts
between Russian-speaking managers and Korean workers. They also became school
principals and teachers. Last but not least, they were made responsible for the
ideological indoctrination or, in the Soviet parlance of the period, for the
"Sovetization" of the local Koreans.
Needless to say, the well-paid and somewhat privileged "continental Koreans",
as those political commissars came to be called, were not popular with the
majority. Relations between these two groups remained tense, if not hostile,
until the 1980s. The North Koreans - those who managed to stay on the island -
also remained a distinct group. They were no in hurry to leave when their
contracts expired, despite persistent reminders by the authorities. However,
the local administration did not expel them involuntarily. Eventually, some of
them left, but many others stayed and blended into the community.
In 1956, there were some 30,000 Koreans on the island. Of them, 21,251 were
"people without citizenship" who had lived on the island since before 1945, and
8,748 were North Korean citizens who arrived in the late 1940s and did not go
back.
In 1953, the Sakhalin Koreans were allowed to adopt Soviet citizenship.
However, few people took up the offer. This might seem surprising, since it was
difficult to live in the Soviet countryside without Soviet citizenship. Any
trip outside one's native district required formal permission. Permission was
issued without much hassle, but one had to apply at least three days prior to a
trip.
Persons without citizenship could not be appointed to any prestigious job: they
could not become managers or officials or teachers. However, in the 1950s,
these problems did not bother Koreans that much. Most Koreans were unskilled
workers who made a living at fisheries and fields, they did not aspire to any
prestigious jobs, and seldom left their native villages.
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