Korjo-saram

Korjo-Saram (also Koryo-Saram , Russian Koreans or formerly Soviet Koreans ; Russian Корё-сарам , Korean 고려 사람 ) is the proper name of the Korean minority who have lived in the Soviet Union and its successor states for many generations . Today it is assumed that there are 450,000 to 500,000 Korjo-Saram, the majority of which live in Russia and Central Asia, especially in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan . There are also smaller minorities in Kyrgyzstan , Ukraine , the other CIS countries and the Baltic States . Another part of the Korjo-Saram emigrated to South Korea after the collapse of the Soviet Union .

The Korjo-Saram are often referred to as Soviet Koreans or Russian Koreans , even if they live in the other former Soviet republics, such as Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan. Terms such as Kazakhstan Koreans or Uzbek Koreans are rarely used.

There are also a large number of Koreans on the island of Sakhalin , known as Sakhalin Koreans (Korean: 사할린 한인).

Korean grave in a cemetery in Samarkand

origin of the name

The name "Korjo" in "Korjo-Saram" is probably derived from the medieval kingdom of Koryŏ , from which the word "Korea" was derived. And the part of the name "-Saram" comes from the Korean word 사람 (sa.ram) and means "man". The Korjo-Saram are also often referred to locally as "Koreans".

history

Immigration to Siberia and the Russian Far East

The end of the 19th century also marked the end of the Joseon Dynasty in Korea . Many impoverished farmers left Korea in the hope of a better life. The Russian Empire , especially the Russian Far East , was one of the most popular destinations for Korean immigrants at the time. In 1869 Koreans made up 20% of the population in the Primorye region , which was directly adjacent to Korea. In the Russian census of 1897, around 26,000 people gave Korean as their mother tongue, and by 1914 the number had risen to almost 65,000. Korean immigration to Russia continued even after the Russian Revolution and the emergence of the Soviet Union , especially since Japan annexed Korea from 1910 onwards. Vladivostok developed into a center for Korean exiles, who from there also supported the independence movements in Korea, such as the March First Movement . In 1923, more than 100,000 Koreans were living in Soviet Russia.

In the course of the Korenizazija policy of the 1920s, minorities in the Soviet Union were explicitly promoted, including the Korean minority. The promotion of minorities ceased to exist as far as possible when the Soviet Union under Stalin began to force Russification , but the Korean communities were still able to develop. Since many Koreans had family connections in the Japanese Empire (Korea was still under Japanese rule), they were seen by Soviet authorities as a potential danger from the late 1920s. In 1931 any further immigration from Korea to the Soviet Union was banned and all Koreans living there had to become Soviet citizens.

In the 1937 Soviet census, almost 170,000 people stated to be Koreans. The vast majority of them still lived in the Russian Far East.

Deportation to Central Asia

Wiktor Zoi , Soviet rock star of the 1980s

In 1937 there were reports of Korean spies in Russia working for Japan. Stalin and Molotov then decided to deport the Korean minority from the Russian Far East to Central Asia , outside the Japanese sphere of influence. Almost the entire Korean minority was resettled in the same year. The Korjo-Saram encountered great difficulties in their new homeland. Most of them were previously rice farmers and fishermen and found it difficult to adapt to the dry Central Asian environment. It is estimated that up to 40,000 Koreans died in the first few years after deportation.

1940-1991

It took years for the Korjo-Saram to achieve the same standard of living they had previously had on Russia's Pacific coast.

Over time, however, her situation improved again. Under Nikita Khrushchev , the Soviet Koreans were the first minority to be officially rehabilitated. Most of the Korjo-Saram meanwhile moved to the larger cities in Central Asia and adapted to the Russian-speaking population. Significant Korean communities were found, and some are still to be found, for example in Tashkent , Almaty , Nur-Sultan (Astana until 2019) , Samarkand , Aqtöbe or Qaraghandy . Many Korjo-Saram achieved social advancement. At the same time, many elements of Korean culture have been lost among the younger generations, especially their language, and mixed marriages have also become more common. Similar to the Germans from Russia who were also deported , the Korjo-Saram assimilated over time, prejudices against them also lost importance, and in a sense their living conditions began to normalize. One of the most famous Korjo-Saram of that time was the rock musician Wiktor Zoi .

The Korjo-Saram eventually rose to become one of the most successful minorities in the Soviet Union. Their standard of living was recently above the Soviet average, and they were disproportionately represented at universities.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union

Russian -speaking church in Seoul for Korjo-Saram, next to it a Kyrgyz restaurant

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, nationalist tendencies emerged in some of its successor states, to which minorities such as the Korjo-Saram, like the Russian population, were exposed. In addition, the economies of most of the former Soviet republics collapsed in the 1990s, pushing many people into unemployment.

This led to a wave of emigration in all of the successor states. Like the Greek minority , the Russian Germans, and some other population groups whose ancestors were outside the USSR, many Korjo-Saram remigrated to Korea. In 2005 there were around 15,000 Uzbek citizens in South Korea , the majority of whom were Korjo-Saram. Almost all of the “returnees” are drawn to the economically prosperous South Korea and not to the isolated and dictatorial North Korea . The emigration to Korea is by far not as pronounced among the Korjo-Saram as, for example, the return of Germans from Russia to Germany. In 2002 there were still 470,000 Korjo-Saram living in the CIS countries . In contrast to Germany, which made it relatively easy for Germans from Russia to settle there and acquire German citizenship quickly, there are no such programs for the Korjo-Saram in South Korea.

Many Soviet Koreans were also drawn to Russia, for example to Moscow and especially to the Russian Pacific coast and the region around Vladivostok, where the Korjo-Saram were originally based.

Several thousand North Koreans have recently immigrated to the latter region. Today, probably the largest center of Korjo-Saram is still Tashkent , where almost 50,000 Koreans live. Many Korjo-Saram today are organized through cultural associations.

Culture

Korjo-Saram culturally adapted mostly to the Russian-speaking population groups in their homeland. Traditional Korean clothing has been replaced by Western fashion. Most of them no longer have Korean but Russian first names. The Russian patronymic is also common. More than 70 percent of the Korjo-Saram live in cities, less than 30 percent of them belong to the rural population. The Korean language also faded into the background over the generations. However, the Korean cuisine in particular has been preserved over the generations. Most of the Korjo-Saram today are Buddhists or Orthodox Christians , and some are Protestants.

language

The linguistic situation of the Korjo-Saram is similar to that of the Russian -Germans , especially the younger generation mostly speaks Russian among themselves. In the last Soviet census in 1989, around 220,000 Koreans gave Russian as their mother tongue, and 217,000 said Korean. Only a small minority of around 16,000 people of Korean origin spoke a language other than Korean or Russian as their mother tongue, mostly the respective national language, for example Ukrainian in Ukraine . The Korjo-Saram, who speak Korean, mostly speak a dialect known as Koryŏmal ( Hangul : 고려 말; Russian Корё маль ). Almost all Korjo-Saram speak Russian at least as a second language.

numbers

In the last Soviet census in 1989, almost 440,000 people gave their nationality as "Korean". Of these, around 183,000 lived in the Uzbek SRR , 107,000 in the Russian SFSR and 103,000 in the Kazakh SSR . Other centers were the Kyrgyz SSR with over 18,000, the Tajik SSR with more than 13,000 and the Turkmen SSR with almost 3,000 Koreans. In the rest of the Soviet republics, only a little less than 5,000 Koreans lived together. The census did not distinguish between Korjo-Saram and Sakhalin Koreans .

Since then, the Korean community of the former Soviet republics has developed very differently depending on the country of origin. In Russia, the number of Koreans rose by almost 50% to over 153,000 by 2010. In Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, their numbers remained largely stable, with a slight negative trend in the meantime. There are currently around 185,000 Koreans living in Uzbekistan (2013), in Kazakhstan 109,000 (2019) and in Kyrgyzstan around 17,000 (2018), on the other hand, their number has decreased significantly in Tajikistan (less than 1000 in 2010).

It is difficult to estimate the number of emigrants from the former Soviet Union to South Korea.

In the Central Asian countries, the Korean settlement centers are in large cities such as Tashkent (around 50,000 Koreans), Almaty (34,000) or Bishkek (12,300).

In Russia, the Sakhalin Oblast is the most important settlement region, where around 25,000 Koreans (5% of the population) live, as well as the Primorye (around 18,000 Koreans) and Khabarovsk (8,000) regions . There are other regions with an above-average proportion of the Korean population in southern Russia and the North Caucasus, for example in Oktyabrsky district in Kalmykia (7% of the population), in the cities of Prochladny (3%) and Maiski (3.3%) in Kabardino-Balkaria or in North Ossetian Mozdok (2%).

In the media

The Korjo-Saram has been the subject of several films, for example in the 2005 South Korean film Wedding Campaign or in Hanaan by Ruslan Pak , published in 2011 .

Well-known Korjo-Saram

Mikhail An , soccer player
Boris Jugaj , general
Hŏ Ka-i , Soviet-North Korean politician
Anatoly Kim , writer
Juli Kim , playwright and musician
Nelli Kim , gymnast and Olympic champion
Vladimir Kim , billionaire and entrepreneur
Witali Li , soccer player
Dmitri Ogai , football player and coach
Ruslan Pak , film director
Nikolai Schin , painter
Eduard Son , soccer player
Lavrenti Son , playwright and theater director
Denis Ten , figure skater
Kostya Tszyu , boxer
Anita Zoi , singer
Wiktor Zoi , rock musician

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ Gunter Deuber: Neglected close contact with Central Asia? In: Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung . December 23, 2005, archived from the original on July 28, 2012 ; accessed on September 22, 2017 .

↑ Uzbek Koreans . From the listeners' corner of Radio Korea International on December 9 and 16, 2000, reproduced on Willi Stengel's website, February 20, 2013, accessed on September 22, 2017.

↑ Lee, Jeanyoung. "Ethnic Korean Migration in Northeast Asia" (PDF). Kyunghee University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-09-02. Retrieved 2006-11-27.

↑ Н.А.Тройницкого: (NA Trojnitskogo): Первая всеобщая перепись населения Российской Империи 1897 г. Распределение населения по родному языку, губерниям и областям . Saint Petersburg, 1905, plate XIII (Russian). Reproduced on demoscope.ru, Demoskop Weekly's website, ISSN 1726-2887 ; accessed on September 22, 2017.

↑ ^a ^b Kwang-kyu Lee: Overseas Koreans . Jimoondang, Seoul 2000, ISBN 89-88095-18-9 .

↑ Jonathan Otto Pohl: Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937-1949 . Greenwood, Westport CT / London, 1999, ISBN 0-313-30921-3 , p. 11 ff.

↑ Jonathan Otto Pohl: Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937-1949 . Greenwood, Westport CT / London 1999, ISBN 0-313-30921-3 , pp. 13-14.

↑ ^a ^b Jochen Stappenbeck: We have been Russians for a long time. Moskauer Deutsche Zeitung , February 15, 2012, archived from the original on June 20, 2012 ; accessed on September 22, 2017 .

↑ ^a ^b Kim Hyeon-kyeong: Scattered Koreans turn homeward: Uzbekistan: Stalin's victims, now seduced by Samsung. Korea JoongAng Daily , September 15, 2005, archived from the original on November 27, 2005 ; accessed on September 22, 2017 (English).

↑ Kwangseo Ki: 구소련 한인 사회 의 역사적 변천 과 현실 [Korean society in the former Soviet Union: historical development and realities] . Proceedings of 2002 Conference of the Association for the Study of Overseas Koreans (ASOK), Seoul: Association for the Study of Overseas Koreans, 2002.

^ Nonna Chernyakova: Coming Home. Vladivostok News 149, September 4, 1997, archived from the original on July 17, 2011 ; accessed on September 22, 2017 (English).

↑ Этническая структура г.Ташкента, 2008 год . ( Memento of the original from January 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (jpeg; 37 kB) Website of the city of Tashkent (Russian) accessed on September 22, 2017 (“The ethnic structure of the city of Tashkent in 2008”). @1@ 2

↑ ^a ^b Trond Trosterud: Soviet censuses: Introduction to the census data, legend to the tables, and sources. University of Tromsø, Norway, 2000, archived from the original on October 29, 2000 ; accessed on September 22, 2017 (English).