Sakhalin Koreans are Russian citizens and residents of Korean descent living on
Sakhalin Island, who can trace their roots to the immigrants from the
Gyeongsang and
Jeolla
Jeolla Province (, ) was one of the historical Eight Provinces of Korea during the Kingdom of Joseon in today Southwestern Korea. It consisted of the modern South Korean provinces of North Jeolla, South Jeolla and Gwangju Metropolitan City as w ...
provinces of
Korea
Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...
during the late 1930s and early 1940s, the latter half of the
Japanese colonial era.
At the time, the southern half of Sakhalin Island, then known as
Karafuto Prefecture
Karafuto Prefecture ( ja, 樺太庁, ''Karafuto-chō''; russian: Префектура Карафуто, Prefektura Karafuto), commonly known as South Sakhalin, was a prefecture of Japan located in Sakhalin from 1907 to 1949.
Karafuto became ter ...
, was under the control of the
Empire of Japan
The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent fo ...
, whereas the northern half was part of the Soviet Union. The Japanese government both recruited and forced Korean labourers into service and shipped them to Karafuto to fill labour shortages resulting from
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. The
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
invaded Karafuto days before
Japan's surrender
The surrender of the Empire of Japan in World War II was announced by Emperor Hirohito on 15 August and formally signed on 2 September 1945, bringing the war's hostilities to a close. By the end of July 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy ( ...
; while all but a few Japanese there
repatriate
Repatriation is the process of returning a thing or a person to its country of origin or citizenship. The term may refer to non-human entities, such as converting a foreign currency into the currency of one's own country, as well as to the pro ...
d successfully, almost one-third of the Koreans could not secure permission to depart either to Japan or their home towns in
South Korea
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...
. For the next forty years, they lived in exile. In 1985, the Japanese government offered transit rights and funding for the repatriation of the original group of Sakhalin Koreans; however, only 1,500 of them returned to South Korea in the next two decades. The vast majority of Koreans of all generations chose instead to stay on Sakhalin.
Due to differing language and immigration history, Sakhalin Koreans may or may not identify themselves as
Koryo-saram
Koryo-saram ( ko, 고려사람; russian: Корё сарам; uk, Корьо-сарам) is the name which ethnic Koreans in the post-Soviet states use to refer to themselves. The term is composed of two Korean words: "", a historical name for ...
. The term "Koryo-saram" may be used encompass to all Koreans in the
former USSR
The post-Soviet states, also known as the former Soviet Union (FSU), the former Soviet Republics and in Russia as the near abroad (russian: links=no, ближнее зарубежье, blizhneye zarubezhye), are the 15 sovereign states that wer ...
, but typically refers to ethnic Koreans from
Hamgyŏng province whose ancestors emigrated to the
Russian Far East
The Russian Far East (russian: Дальний Восток России, r=Dal'niy Vostok Rossii, p=ˈdalʲnʲɪj vɐˈstok rɐˈsʲiɪ) is a region in Northeast Asia. It is the easternmost part of Russia and the Asian continent; and is admini ...
in the 19th century, and then were later
deported to Central Asia. The issue of self-identification is complicated by the fact that many Sakhalin Koreans feel that Koreans from
Central Asia
Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...
look down on them.
History
Under Japanese colonialism
Origins
![KarafutoMassacresMap](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/KarafutoMassacresMap.png)
Korean immigration to Sakhalin began as early as the 1910s when the
Mitsui Group
is one of the largest ''keiretsu'' in Japan and one of the largest corporate groups in the world.
The major companies of the group include Mitsui & Co. ( general trading company), Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Nippon Paper Industries ...
began recruiting labourers from the peninsula for their mining operations.
In 1920, ten years after the
annexation of Korea by Japan, there were fewer than one thousand Koreans in the whole of Karafuto Prefecture, overwhelmingly male.
Aside from an influx of refugees from the
Maritimes, who escaped to
Karafuto
Karafuto Prefecture ( ja, 樺太庁, ''Karafuto-chō''; russian: Префектура Карафуто, Prefektura Karafuto), commonly known as South Sakhalin, was a prefecture of Japan located in Sakhalin from 1907 to 1949.
Karafuto became ter ...
during the
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government ...
, the number of Koreans in the province did not rise very rapidly; as late as the mid-1930s, there were fewer than 6,000 Koreans in Karafuto.
However, as Japan's war effort picked up, the Japanese government sought to put more people on the ground in the sparsely-populated prefecture in order to ensure their control of the territory and fill the increasing demands of the coal mines and lumber yards. Recruiters turned to sourcing workers from the Korean peninsula; at one point, over 150,000 Koreans were relocated to work on the island.
Of those, around 10,000 mine workers were relocated to Japan prior to the war's end; present-day Sakhalin Koreans' efforts to locate them proved futile.
The
Imperial Japanese Army
The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...
in Karafuto frequently used local ethnic minorities (
Oroks
Oroks (''Ороки'' in Russian; self-designation: ''Ulta, Ulcha''), sometimes called Uilta, are a people in the Sakhalin Oblast (mainly the eastern part of the island) in Russia. The Orok language belongs to the Southern group of the Tungu ...
,
Nivkhs
The Nivkh, or Gilyak (also Nivkhs or Nivkhi, or Gilyaks; ethnonym: Нивхгу, ''Nʼivxgu'' (Amur) or Ниғвңгун, ''Nʼiɣvŋgun'' (E. Sakhalin) "the people"), are an indigenous ethnic group inhabiting the northern half of Sakhalin Islan ...
, and
Ainu) to conduct intelligence-gathering activities, because, as indigenous inhabitants, their presence would not arouse suspicion on the Soviet half of the island. Ethnic Koreans could also be found on both sides of the border, but the use of Koreans as spies was not common, as the Karafuto police were wary of the support for the
independence movement
Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...
among Koreans. Soviet suspicion towards Korean nationalism, along with fears that the Korean community might harbour Japanese spies, led to the 1937
deportation of Koreans from Soviet-controlled northern Sakhalin and the
Russian Far East
The Russian Far East (russian: Дальний Восток России, r=Dal'niy Vostok Rossii, p=ˈdalʲnʲɪj vɐˈstok rɐˈsʲiɪ) is a region in Northeast Asia. It is the easternmost part of Russia and the Asian continent; and is admini ...
, to Central Asia.
After the large scale deportation of Soviet Koreans to Central Asia, the few who were not deported continued to live in northern Sakhalin. Some 2,000 Koreans remained in northern Sakhalin as part of Soviet-Japanese oil 'concessions' (joint ventures). Contradicting the Soviet stated aim for the deportation, Japan was allowed to bring in additional workers with Soviet permission, and the facilities operated until 1943.
The origins of Sakhalin Koreans are traced to the Japanese-controlled southern half of the island.
Soviet invasion and Japanese massacres
The Soviet Union
invaded the Japanese portion of Sakhalin on 11 August 1945 during the
Soviet–Japanese War
The Soviet–Japanese War (russian: Советско-японская война; ja, ソ連対日参戦, soren tai nichi sansen, Soviet Union entry into war against Japan), known in Mongolia as the Liberation War of 1945 (), was a military ...
towards the end of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. In the confusion that ensued, a rumour began to spread that ethnic Koreans could be serving as spies for the Soviet Union, and led to massacres of Koreans by Japanese police and civilians. Despite the generally limited amount of information about the massacres, two examples of massacres are comparatively well-known today: the incident in Kamishisuka (now Leonidovo) on 18 August 1945, and the incident in Mizuho Village (now Pozharskoye), which lasted from 20 to 23 August 1945.
In Kamishisuka, the Japanese police arrested 19 Koreans on charges of spy activities; 18 were found shot within the police station the next day. The sole survivor, a Korean known only by his
Japanese name
in modern times consist of a family name (surname) followed by a given name, in that order. Nevertheless, when a Japanese name is written in the Roman alphabet, ever since the Meiji era, the official policy has been to cater to Western expecta ...
Nakata, had survived by hiding in a toilet; he later offered testimony about the event.
In Mizuho Village, Japanese fleeing Soviet troops who had landed at Maoka (now
Kholmsk
Kholmsk (russian: Холмск), known until 1946 as Maoka ( ja, 真岡), is a port town and the administrative center of Kholmsky District of Sakhalin Oblast, Russia. It is located on the southwest coast of the Sakhalin Island, on coast of the g ...
) claimed that the Koreans were cooperating with the Red Army and that they were pillaging Japanese property. Though Koreans and Japanese worked alongside each other in the village on farms and construction projects, the Japanese civilians turned against their Korean neighbors, killing 27 between 20 and 23 August.
Other individual Koreans may have been killed to cover up evidence of Japanese atrocities committed during the evacuation: one woman interviewed by a US-Russian joint commission investigating the issue of Allied prisoners of war held by the
Imperial Japanese Army
The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...
in
camps on Sakhalin reported that her ethnic Korean lover had been murdered by Japanese troops after he had witnessed mass shootings of hundreds of American prisoners of war.
Integration into the Soviet Union
Repatriation refused
In the years after the Soviet invasion, most of the 400,000 Japanese civilians who had not already been
evacuated during the war left voluntarily under the auspices of the US-USSR Agreement on Repatriation of those left in the USSR, signed in December 1946. Many of the 150,000 Koreans on the island safely returned to mainland Japan, and some went to the northern half of the Korean peninsula; however, roughly 43,000 were not accepted for repatriation by Japan, and also could not be repatriated to the southern half of the Korean peninsula due to the political situation.
The Soviet government initially had drawn up plans to repatriate the Koreans along with the Japanese, but the local administration on Sakhalin objected, arguing that incoming Russians from the mainland would not be sufficient to replace the skilled labourers who had already departed. The indecision about the ultimate fate of the Sakhalin Koreans persisted until the outbreak of the
Korean War
, date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...
, after which repatriation became a political impossibility. Some sources claim Stalin himself blocked their departure because he wanted to retain them as coal miners on the island.
In 1957, Seoul appealed for Tokyo's assistance to secure the departure of ethnic Koreans from Sakhalin via Japan, but Tokyo took no real action on the request, and blamed Soviet intransigence for the lack of progress in resolving the issue; Japan continued its earlier policy of granting entrance only to Sakhalin Koreans who were married to Japanese citizens, or had a Japanese parent.
During the late 1940s, the ranks of ethnic Koreans on the island were augmented by another 8,000 North Korean expatriates, recruited by the Soviet government to work in state-owned fisheries.
In an effort to integrate the Korean labourers, who were unfamiliar with the Soviet system and unable to speak Russian, local authorities set up schools using the Korean language as the medium of instruction. However, the Sakhalin Koreans were believed to have been "infected with the Japanese spirit", and so for the most part the authorities did not trust them to run any of their own collective farms, mills, factories, schools, or hospitals. Instead, these tasks were left to several hundred
ethnic Koreans imported from Central Asia, who were bilingual in Russian and Korean. Resentment towards the social dominance of Koreans from Central Asia over the Sakhalin Koreans led to tensions between the two groups; the latter developed a number of disparaging terms in Korean to refer to the former.
The Sakhalin government's policy towards the Sakhalin Koreans continued to shift in line with bilateral relations between North Korea and the Soviet Union. During the 1950s, North Korea
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu River, Y ...
demanded that the Soviets treat Sakhalin Koreans as North Korean citizens, and, through their consulate, even set up study groups and other educational facilities for them (analogous to Chongryon's similar, more successful efforts among the Zainichi Koreans
comprise ethnic Koreans who have permanent residency status in Japan or who have become Japanese citizens, and whose immigration to Japan originated before 1945, or who are descendants of those immigrants. They are a group distinct from South ...
). During the late 1950s, it became increasingly difficult for the Sakhalin Koreans to obtain Soviet citizenship, and a growing proportion chose instead to become North Korean citizens rather than to deal with the burdens of remaining stateless, which included severe restrictions on their freedom of movement and the requirement to apply for permission from the local government in order to travel outside of Sakhalin. As of 1960, only 25% had been able to secure Soviet citizenship; 65% had declared North Korean citizenship, with the remaining 10% choosing to remain unaffiliated despite the difficulties this entailed. However, as relations between the Soviet Union and North Korea deteriorated, the authorities acted to de-emphasise Korean language education and reduce the influence of North Korea within the community; by the early 1970s, Sakhalin Koreans were once again encouraged to apply for Soviet citizenship.
Attention from the outside world
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the situation of the Sakhalin Koreans improved as the outside world began to pay much more attention to their situation. Starting in 1966, Park No Hak, a former Sakhalin Korean who had earlier received permission to leave Sakhalin and settle in Japan by virtue of his having a Japanese wife, petitioned the Japanese government a total of 23 times to discuss the issue of the Sakhalin Koreans with the Soviet government. His actions inspired 500,000 South Koreans to form an organisation to work towards the repatriation of their co-ethnics; in response, the South Korean began radio broadcasts targeted at the Sakhalin Koreans, in an effort to assure them that they had not been forgotten. At the same time, Rei Mihara, a Tokyo housewife, formed a similar pressure group in Japan, and 18 Japanese lawyers attempted to sue the Japanese government to force them to accept diplomatic and financial responsibility for the transportation of the Sakhalin Koreans and their return to South Korea.
Additionally, the Soviet government finally began to permit the Sakhalin Koreans to naturalize. However, as many as 10% continued to refuse both Soviet and North Korean citizenship and demanded repatriation to South Korea. By 1976, only 2,000 more of their population had been able to obtain permission to depart from Sakhalin, but that year, the Sakhalin government made a public announcement that people seeking to emigrate to South Korea could simply show up at the Immigration Office to file an application. Within a week, they had received more than 800 such applications, including some from North Korean citizens; this caused the North Korean embassy to complain to their Soviet counterparts about the new emigration policy. The Soviet authorities in the end chose for unspecified reasons to refuse to issue exit visas to most of those concerned, leading to the unusual case of public demonstrations about the refusals by Korean families. This level of open dissent provoked the authorities to completely reverse their liberalising stance towards the Sakhalin Koreans; they arrested more than 40 protestors, and in November 1976 deported them, but to North Korea rather than to the South as they desired. Further purges and intimidation of those seeking to emigrate also followed. Through to the early 1980s, locally born Korean youth, increasingly interested in their heritage, were seen as traitors by their Russian neighbours for wanting to know more about their ancestral land and for seeking to emigrate. The nadir of ethnic relations came after the 1983 shooting-down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007
Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (KE007/KAL007)The flight number KAL 007 was used by air traffic control, while the public flight booking system used KE 007 was a scheduled Korean Air Lines flight from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage, Alas ...
by the Soviet Union.
Perestroika, glasnost, and the post-Soviet period
Improving relations with Japan
In 1985, Japan agreed to approve transit rights and fund the repatriation of the first generation of Sakhalin Koreans; the Soviet Union also began to liberalize their emigration laws in 1987. As of 2001, Japan spends US$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
1.2 million a year to fund Sakhalin Koreans' visits to Seoul. The Foreign Ministry allocated about $5 million to build a cultural centre in Sakhalin, which was intended to feature a library, an exhibition hall, Korean language classrooms, and other facilities, but , the project had not begun, causing protests among the Sakhalin Koreans.
On 18 April 1990, Taro Nakayama, Japan's Minister for Foreign Affairs
A foreign affairs minister or minister of foreign affairs (less commonly minister for foreign affairs) is generally a cabinet minister in charge of a state's foreign policy and relations. The formal title of the top official varies between cou ...
, stated:
: ''"Japan is deeply sorry for the tragedy in which these (Korean) people were moved to Sakhalin not of their own free will but by the design of the Japanese government and had to remain there after the conclusion of the war"''.[Translation]
in Kenichi Takagi, Rethinking Japan's Postwar Compensation: Voices of Victims. tr. by Makiko Nakano.
The foreign trade of Sakhalin with Japan is still roughly four times that with Korea, and Japanese companies greatly outnumber their Korean counterparts on the island. As a result, while members of the first generation still carry anti-Japanese sentiment
Anti-Japanese sentiment (also called Japanophobia, Nipponophobia and anti-Japanism) involves the hatred or fear of anything which is Japanese, be it its culture or its people. Its opposite is Japanophilia.
Overview
Anti-Japanese senti ...
, the younger generations have developed an interest in Japanese culture and have taken up the study of the Japanese language, much to the consternation of their elders. On 28 October 2006, a Korean student from the Sakhalin State University placed second in the All-CIS
Cis or cis- may refer to:
Places
* Cis, Trentino, in Italy
* In Poland:
** Cis, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, south-central
** Cis, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, north
Math, science and biology
* cis (mathematics) (cis(''θ'')), a trigonome ...
Japanese Language Students Competition.
North and South Korean influence
During the 1990s, commerce, communication, and direct flights opened up between Sakhalin and South Korea
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...
, and the two Koreas began to vie openly for influence among the Sakhalin Koreans. Television and radio programmes from both North and South Korea, as well as local programming, began to be broadcast on Sakhalin Korean Broadcasting
Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, r=Sakhalín, p=səxɐˈlʲin; ja, 樺太 ''Karafuto''; zh, c=, p=Kùyèdǎo, s=库页岛, t=庫頁島; Manchu: ᠰᠠᡥᠠᠯᡳᠶᠠᠨ, ''Sahaliyan''; Orok: Бугата на̄, ''Bugata nā''; Nivkh ...
, the only Korean television station in all of Russia. North Korea negotiated with Russia for closer economic relations with Sakhalin, and sponsored an art show in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk ( rus, Ю́жно-Сахали́нск, a=Ru-Южно-Сахалинск.ogg, p=ˈjuʐnə səxɐˈlʲinsk, literally "South Sakhalin City") is a city on Sakhalin island, and the administrative center of Sakhalin Oblast, Russia. I ...
in 2006. They have also permitted delegations of Sakhalin Koreans to visit relatives in North Korea. Scholarly studies suggest that roughly 1,000 Sakhalin Koreans have opted to repatriate to North Korea, but the rise of the South Korean economy combined with the ongoing economic and political turmoil in the North have made this option less attractive. Sakhalin Koreans have also provided assistance to refugees fleeing North Korea, either those who illegally escaped across the border, or those who escaped North Korean labour camps in Russia itself.
South Korea and Japan jointly funded the building of a nursing home for elderly Sakhalin Koreans in Ansan, a suburb of Seoul, and under the auspices of the Korean Red Cross
The Republic of Korea National Red Cross (more commonly known as the Korean Red Cross) is a humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and education inside South Korea. It is the designated South Korean aff ...
, 1,544 people had settled there and in other locations , while another 14,122 had travelled to South Korea on short-term visits at Japanese government expense. South Korean investors also began to participate in the international tenders for works contracts to develop the Sakhalin Shelf, as they are interested in the potential supply of liquefied natural gas
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volu ...
. By the year 2000, South Korean missionaries had opened several churches, and South Koreans comprised the majority of international students
International students, or foreign students, are students who undertake all or part of their tertiary education in a country other than their own and move to that country for the purpose of studying.
In 2019, there were over 6 million internati ...
at the Sakhalin State University. The Korean Residents' Association on Sakhalin, an ethnic representative body, is generally described as being pro-South Korean, analogous to Japan's Mindan
Mindan ( ko, 민단), or the Korean Residents Union in Japan (), is one of two main organizations for Koreans living in Japan, the other being Chongryon. Mindan has ties to South Korea and was established in 1946 in Tokyo, Japan. Currently, amo ...
. In addition to the elderly, a few younger Koreans have also chosen to move to South Korea, either to find their roots, or for economic reasons, as wages in South Korea are as much as three times those in Sakhalin. However, upon arrival, they often find that they are viewed as foreigners by the South Korean locals, despite their previous exposure to Korean culture in Sakhalin. As one returnee put it, "Sakhalin Koreans live in a different world than Sakhalin Russians but that world isn’t Korea". In general, younger Sakhalin Koreans, especially those lacking fluency in the Korean language, prefer to stay on Sakhalin. Of the 1,544 Koreans who repatriated to South Korea , nearly 10% eventually returned to Sakhalin. Conversely, some foreign students from Korea studying in Sakhalin also reported difficulties in befriending local Koreans, claiming that the latter looked down on them for being foreigners.
Local interethnic relations
In the late 1980s, suspicions against the Sakhalin Koreans remained. With the relaxation of internal migration controls and the dissolution of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...
, Russians began moving ''en masse'' back to the mainland, making ethnic Koreans an increasing proportion of the population; there were fears that they might become a majority of the island's population, and seek an autonomous republic
An autonomous republic is a type of administrative division similar to a province or state. A significant number of autonomous republics can be found within the successor states of the Soviet Union, but the majority are located within Russia. Man ...
or even independence. However, the rise of the regional economy and the cultural assimilation of the younger generations drove more than 95% of Koreans to stay in Sakhalin or move to the Russian Far East
The Russian Far East (russian: Дальний Восток России, r=Dal'niy Vostok Rossii, p=ˈdalʲnʲɪj vɐˈstok rɐˈsʲiɪ) is a region in Northeast Asia. It is the easternmost part of Russia and the Asian continent; and is admini ...
rather than leave for South Korea, as they have come to consider Russia their home country. The Sakhalin Koreans' family connections in South Korea have benefited even those who remained on Sakhalin with easier access to South Korean business and imports; trade with South Korea has brought the Sakhalin Koreans a better economic standing than the average resident of Sakhalin. By 2004, inter-ethnic relations between Russians and Koreans had improved greatly and were generally not described as being a problem on Sakhalin. However, Sakhalin Koreans who have travelled to the mainland of Russia, or have relocated to there (a population of roughly 10,000), report that they have encountered various forms of racism.
Among the Koreans who remain on Sakhalin, roughly 7,000 of the original generation of settlers survive, while their locally born descendants make up the rest of the local Korean population. They are highly urbanized; half live in the administrative centre of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk ( rus, Ю́жно-Сахали́нск, a=Ru-Южно-Сахалинск.ogg, p=ˈjuʐnə səxɐˈlʲinsk, literally "South Sakhalin City") is a city on Sakhalin island, and the administrative center of Sakhalin Oblast, Russia. I ...
, where Koreans constitute nearly 12% of the population. Around thirty per cent of Sakhalin's thirty thousand Koreans still have not taken Russian citizenship. Unlike ethnic Russians or other local minority groups, Sakhalin Koreans are exempted from conscription
Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day un ...
, but there have been calls for this exemption to be terminated.
Culture
Personal and family names
Korean surnames, when Cyrillized, may be spelled slightly differently from the romanisations used in the US; the resulting common pronunciations also differ, as can be seen in the table at right. Furthermore, Korean naming practices and Russian naming practices conflict in several important ways. While most members of the older generations of Sakhalin Koreans used Korean names, members of the younger generations favor their Russian names. However, with the increasing exposure to South Korean pop culture, some younger Koreans have named their children after characters in Korean television dramas. The use of patronymic
A patronymic, or patronym, is a component of a personal name based on the given name of one's father, grandfather (avonymic), or an earlier male ancestor.
Patronymics are still in use, including mandatory use, in many countries worldwide, alt ...
s is not widespread.
In addition to Korean names, the oldest generation of Sakhalin Koreans are often legally registered under Japanese names, which they had originally adopted due to the ''sōshi-kaimei
Sōshi-kaimei (創氏改名, ko, 일본식 성명 강요) was a policy of pressuring Koreans under Japanese rule to adopt Japanese names. It consisted of two parts. Ordinance No. 19, issued in 1939, required ''sōshi'', literally "creatio ...
'' policy of the Japanese colonial era. After the Soviet invasion, the Sakhalin authorities conducted name registration for the local Koreans on the basis of the Japanese identity documents issued by the old Karafuto government; as of 2006, the Russian government uniformly refused requests for re-registration under Korean names.
Language
Due to their greater population density and expectation that they would one day be allowed to return to Korea, the Sakhalin Koreans have kept something of a sojourner mentality rather than a settler mentality, which influenced their relation to the surrounding society; even today, they tend to speak much better Korean than those who were deported to Central Asia. A weekly Korean language newspaper, the ''Saegoryeo Shinmun'' (새고려 신문), has been published since 1949, while Sakhalin Korean Broadcasting began operation in 1956. Korean-language television programmes are broadcast locally, but typically with Russian subtitles. Additionally, during the Soviet era, Sakhalin Koreans were often hired to act as announcers and writers for official media aimed at the Koryo-saram
Koryo-saram ( ko, 고려사람; russian: Корё сарам; uk, Корьо-сарам) is the name which ethnic Koreans in the post-Soviet states use to refer to themselves. The term is composed of two Korean words: "", a historical name for ...
in Central Asia. However, unlike the Koryo-saram
Koryo-saram ( ko, 고려사람; russian: Корё сарам; uk, Корьо-сарам) is the name which ethnic Koreans in the post-Soviet states use to refer to themselves. The term is composed of two Korean words: "", a historical name for ...
, the spoken Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula
* Korean cuisine
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl
**Korean dialects and the Jeju language
** ...
of Sakhalin is not very closely related to Hamgyŏng dialect
The Hamgyŏng dialect, or Northeastern Korean, is a dialect of the Korean language used in most of North and South Hamgyŏng and Ryanggang Provinces of northeastern North Korea, all of which were originally united as Hamgyŏng Province. Since t ...
or Koryo-mar
, , or ( ko, 고려말, russian: Корё мар), otherwise known as () by speakers of the dialect, is a dialect of Korean language, Korean spoken by the Koryo-saram, ethnic Koreans in the countries of the Post-Soviet states, former Soviet U ...
, but is instead descended from Jeolla
Jeolla Province (, ) was one of the historical Eight Provinces of Korea during the Kingdom of Joseon in today Southwestern Korea. It consisted of the modern South Korean provinces of North Jeolla, South Jeolla and Gwangju Metropolitan City as w ...
and Gyeongsang dialect
The Gyeongsang dialects (also spelled Kyŏngsang), or Southeastern Korean, are dialects of the Korean language of the Yeongnam region, which includes both Gyeongsang provinces,
North and South. There are approximately 13,000,000 speakers. Unlike ...
s. As a result of the diplomatic situation up until the 1980s, during which South Korea had no relations with the Soviet Union, Korean-language instructional materials were provided by North Korea or developed domestically. Oddly enough, as a result, Sakhalin Koreans' writing, like that of Koryo-saram, follows the North Korean standard, but their spoken Korean in radio broadcasts has come to resemble the Seoul dialect
The Gyeonggi dialect () or Seoul dialect () of the Korean language is the prestige dialect of the language and the basis of the standardized form used in South Korea. It is spoken throughout the Korean Peninsula and in the Korean diaspora, but i ...
of South Korea.
Religion
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there has been significant growth in religious activities among the Sakhalin Koreans; the establishment of churches was noted in scholarly articles as early as 1990. Christian hymns have become popular listening material, supplementing the more typical Russian, Western, and Korean pop music
K-pop (), short for Korean popular music, is a form of popular music originating in South Korea as part of South Korean culture. It includes styles and genres from around the world, such as pop, hip hop, R&B, experimental, rock, jazz, gos ...
. Korean churches also broadcast religious content through Sakhalin Korean Broadcasting; a Baptist
Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only ( believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul compe ...
church run by ethnic Koreans sponsors a journalist there. However, large-scale religious events can be subjected to restriction by the government authorities: in June 1998 the local Russian Orthodox Church
, native_name_lang = ru
, image = Moscow July 2011-7a.jpg
, imagewidth =
, alt =
, caption = Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, Russia
, abbreviation = ROC
, type ...
and the regional administration of Sakhalin successfully pressured Korean Presbyterian missionaries to cancel a conference of more than 100 Presbyterian and other Protestant missionaries from around the former Soviet Union. Ethnic Koreans are numerous among the church-goers of St. James Cathedral, seat of the Apostolic Prefecture of Yuzhno Sakhalinsk
The Apostolic Prefecture of Yuzhno Sakhalinsk is a Latin Catholic missionary pre-diocesan jurisdiction on the Russian (ex-Japanese) Far Eastern island Sakhalin.
It is exempt, i.e. directly dependent on the Holy See (not part of any ecclesiastic ...
, in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Catholic missions in Kholmsk and Aniva have also a fair number of Korean parishioners.
Music
In one survey, a third of the Sakhalin Korean population expressed a preference for traditional Korean music, a far higher proportion than in any other ethnic Korean community surveyed. However, despite their better knowledge of Korean language, the same survey showed that Korean pop music is less widespread among Sakhalin Koreans than among ethnic Koreans in Kazakhstan, possessing about the same degree of popularity as in Uzbekistan. Sakhalin Koreans also reported listening to Western popular and classical music at much lower rates than Koreans in the rest of the former Soviet Union. Study of traditional Korean musical instruments has also been gaining popularity across all generations. The Ethnos Arts School was established in 1991 in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to teach children's classes in traditional Korean dance, piano, sight singing
In music, sight-reading, also called ''a prima vista'' (Italian meaning "at first sight"), is the practice of reading and performing of a piece in a music notation that the performer has not seen or learned before. Sight-singing is used to descri ...
, and the ''gayageum
The ''gayageum'' or ''kayagum'' (in Korean 가야금, 伽倻琴 in Chinese characters) is a traditional Korean plucked zither with 12 strings, though some more recent variants have 18, 21 or 25 strings. It is probably the best known traditional ...
'', a zither
Zithers (; , from the Greek word ''cithara'') are a class of stringed instruments. Historically, the name has been applied to any instrument of the psaltery family, or to an instrument consisting of many strings stretched across a thin, flat ...
-like instrument supposedly invented around the time of the Gaya confederacy
Gaya (, ) was a Korean confederacy of territorial polities in the Nakdong River basin of southern Korea, growing out of the Byeonhan confederacy of the Samhan period.
The traditional period used by historians for Gaya chronology is AD 42–53 ...
.
See also
* Russia–South Korea relations
Russia–South Korea relations (russian: Российско-южнокорейские отношения, Rossiisko-yuzhnokoreyskie otnosheniya, ko, 한러 관계, hanreo gwangye) or Russian–South Korean relations are the bilateral foreign rel ...
* Russia-North Korea relations
* Chinese people in Russia
Ethnic Chinese in Russia officially numbered 39,483 according to the 2002 census. However, this figure is contested, with the Overseas Community Affairs Council of Taiwan claiming 998,000 in 2004 and 2005, and Russian demographers generally accep ...
* Japanese people in Russia
Japanese people in Russia form a small part of the worldwide community of '' Nikkeijin'', consisting mainly of Japanese expatriates and their descendants born in Russia. They count various notable political figures among their number.
Early sett ...
* Russians in Korea
Russians in Korea (; russian: Русские в Корее) do not form a very large population, but they have a history going back to the Korean Empire. The community of Russian subjects/citizens in Korea has historically included not just ethn ...
*Koryo-saram
Koryo-saram ( ko, 고려사람; russian: Корё сарам; uk, Корьо-сарам) is the name which ethnic Koreans in the post-Soviet states use to refer to themselves. The term is composed of two Korean words: "", a historical name for ...
*Korean diaspora
The Korean diaspora (South Korea: or , North Korea: or ) consists of around 7.3 million people, both descendants of early emigrants from the Korean Peninsula, as well as more recent emigres from Korea. Around 84.5% of overseas Koreans live in ...
References
External links
Sakhalin Korean Broadcasting (사할린 우리말 방송국)
A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans
(documentary)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Koreans, Sakhalin
Asian diaspora in Russia
Ethnic groups in Russia
Japan in World War II
Japan–Korea relations
Sakhalin
Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, r=Sakhalín, p=səxɐˈlʲin; ja, 樺太 ''Karafuto''; zh, c=, p=Kùyèdǎo, s=库页岛, t=庫頁島; Manchu: ᠰᠠᡥᠠᠯᡳᠶᠠᠨ, ''Sahaliyan''; Orok: Бугата на̄, ''Bugata nā''; Nivkh: ...
Korea under Japanese rule
Sakhalin Koreans
Sakhalin Koreans are Russian citizens and residents of Korean descent living on Sakhalin Island, who can trace their roots to the immigrants from the Gyeongsang and Jeolla provinces of Korea during the late 1930s and early 1940s, the latter ...
Sakhalin
Japan–Russia relations
Japan–Soviet Union relations
Russia–South Korea relations
North Korea–Russia relations
Korea–Soviet Union relations
*