Homeland and Diasporic Space: Transnational Practices ofCentral Asian and Sakhalin Koreans
Igor Saveliev
Abstract
This paper analyzes the trajectories of movement of Koreans in the former Soviet Union andtheir new diasporic spaces in migration destinations. While their residence was restricted to certain
areas in Central Asia and Sakhalin during the Soviet era, the relaxation of residence restrictions in thelate 1980s allowed them to look for new opportunities far away from their places of residence.
Emphasizing the diversity of Korean communities in the post-Soviet space, this paper examines theirperception of homeland and focuses on two projects aimed at reviving the sense of ancestral homeland,
one in the Russian Far East, and the other in the Republic of Korea.
Introduction
A Central Asian Korean respondent once defined “homeland” as universal and circumstantial.
“For us, overseas Koreans, homeland is where we live,” she said.1 Is this true for all Central Asian and
Sakhalin Koreans? Where is their native land? This study attempts to address these questions,
examining the relationship between the notion of “homeland” and the construction of diasporic spaces.
Homeland may be understood from two points of view – as a state, to which an individual owes
allegiance, and locale, with which an individual holds the deepest cultural, psychological or emotional
association. The author uses the second, narrow definition of “homeland” in this paper.
In multiethnic states, cultural association is very complex as the individual is naturally
influenced by different cultural elements surrounding him/her. More importantly, an individual has an
intimate connection with the locale where he/she was born and raised. The separation from this place
and the search for a new destination to settle down involve a complex and painful process. When an
individual is forced to move to a new place due to various circumstances, it takes time and effort tomake a decision.
Although none of the ancestors of the interviewees ever lived in the Korean Peninsula until
the end of the Soviet period, the Stalinist settlement policy and the restriction of movement forced themto live in homogeneous villages and towns in Central Asia and Sakhalin, which helped them to preserve
their ethnic identity. In this sense, they associated the locales, where they were born and lived, withsome elements of Korean culture that, as shown below, were different in Central Asia and Sakhalin. As

 Igor Saveliev is Associate Professor of Graduate School of Humanities, Nagoya University. He can be contacted

at: saveliev@gsid.nagoya-u.ac.jp
1 Interview with Liliya, aged 26, fifth-generation Central Asian Korean, November 2009.
DOI: 10.14943/ebr.9.1.29

29

Eurasia Border Review < Article >the residence restrictions were gradually relaxed in the late 1980s, they began moving and soon faced
the necessity to reconsider their sense of homeland.
A half million ethnic Koreans of the post-Soviet space represent a very diverse ethnic group.2
The descendants of migrants who moved to the Russian Empire in the second half of the nineteenth –early twentieth century were forcibly resettled in Central Asia during the Stalinist purges. They are now
called “Central Asian Koreans,” although their attachment to this region has been involuntary andtemporal. Another group, the “Sakhalin Koreans,” are descendants of migrants, who were brought orcame voluntarily to the island to work in coal mines in the 1930s–1940s. The descendants of contract
workers from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), who were recruited in 1947–1949
through a USSR-DPRK intergovernmental agreement, comprise another group not covered in thispaper. When a ship came in 1949 to take their parents back to North Korea, the contractors from the
DPRK silently left for the remote mountains, thus denying “the DPRK” as their homeland and choosing
the Soviet Union as a new one.3 For members of the two groups of Koreans covered in the paper, theircultural identity has become susceptible to the name of their residence. But do they perceive theseplaces as their “homeland”? What country(s) or region(s) do Koreans in the CIS (the Commonwealthof Independent States) consider as their real “homeland”? Why do the members of these diverse groups
look for a “home” in different parts of the Eurasian continent? Is their decision to move predicated on
their perception of a homeland? Basing on data from in-depth interviews with over 50 respondents andexamining some other sources, this paper will address these questions, dealing with key concepts of“homeland,” “space” and “diaspora.”
Koreans in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union and their Post-Soviet Mobility
Throughout the century-and-a-half-long history of Koreans in Russia, who began moving to
the Russian Empire from the 1860s, their identity has transformed several times, becoming more
intricate in the post-Soviet period. They were allowed and even encouraged to naturalize in the Russian
Far East (RFE) by receiving Russian citizenship between 1893 and 1899, and many Koreans also
converted to the Orthodox faith. Between 1905 and 1916, thousands of anti-Japanese rebels fled fromthe Korean Peninsula to Russia’s Maritime Province. The Korean population in this part of Russia
almost doubled over ten years (1902–1912) from 32,410 to 59,715. After the Bolsheviks took power in
1917, most of 81,825 Koreans4 chose to stay in the Soviet Union where most continued to raise crops.
2 In this paper, I define “ethnic Koreans” as the descendants of migrants from the Korean Peninsula. Despite thefact that they hold citizenship of different states, most of them have kept their Korean family names. However, as
shown below, their collective memory varies from group to group.
3 Lee Chaimun, “A Tale of Two Nationalities: North Koreans in Kamchatka and South Koreans in Sakhalin Island,
Russia.” Paper presented at the international symposium “Diaspora and Transnationalism in East Asia,”
Kyungpook University, November 18, 2016. The recruitment of workers in North Korea was halted at the
beginning of the Korean War.
4 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv Dal’nego Vostoka [The Russian National Historical Archives of
the Far East] file no. 87-4-1593, 7–8; Vladimir Grave, Kitaitsy, koreitsy i iapontsy v Priamur ’ e: Trudy
komandirovannoi po vysochaishemu poveleniiu Amurskoi ekspeditsii [Chinese, Koreans and Japanese in the Amur

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Igor Saveliev

Their fate changed dramatically in 1937, when the Stalinist regime decided to resettle them to remoteCentral Asia. Within the short period of three months (September to November 1937), almost all
members of the Korean diaspora – which had significantly grown over two decades and was now
comprised of 171,781 people (36,442 families) – were forcibly moved to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.5
Sakhalin Koreans (“sakhalinskie” in Russian) are descendants of Koreans who were forced to
go or deceived to work in the harsh conditions of Sakhalin by the Japanese colonial regime in the 1930s
and 1940s. 6 In total, 23,500 Koreans, most of whom were from the southern part of the Korean
Peninsula, resided in Sakhalin in mid-August of 19457 when Soviet troops landed on the island. They
were denied the right to be repatriated to Japan and could not return to the Korean Peninsula becauseof the outbreak of the Korean War. Some Sakhalin Koreans went to the DPRK in the late 1950s, but
most of them soon returned to the USSR, disappointed with the harsh living conditions.8 North Korea
soon lost their significance as a homeland for Sakhalin Koreans.
Sakhalin Koreans were not granted Soviet citizenship and were prohibited from moving
outside of Sakhalin until the late 1950s. 9 Only a very few young and gifted individuals received
permission to study on the Soviet “mainland,” mostly in the educational institutions east of the Urals.
In 1989, just after political reform and democratization had started in Russia, 36,191 Koreans wereresiding on the island.10
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, both Central Asian and Sakhalin Koreans,
like many Russians and Russian-speaking people in the former Soviet republics, began leaving theseregions. The strict planned-economic controls on migration were relaxed in the late 1980s – early 1990s.
After the break-up of the Soviet Union, a classic set of push-pull factors accelerated this process. Newly
independent states in Central Asia were engaged in the process of state and national building.11 High
unemployment rates and the occupation of many civil service jobs by representatives of ethnic
majorities in most Central Asian states (except Kazakhstan) were the major push factors, while labor
shortages in big Russian cities served as a pull factor. As Moya Flynn notes, “the migration of ethnic
Russian and Russian-speaking migrants from the other former Soviet republics to the Russian

Region. Report of the Expedition Sent by Imperial Order to the Amur Region] 11 (St. Petersburg: V. F. Kirshbaum,1912), 129–130.
5 Anatolii Kuzin, Dal’nevostochnye koreitsy: zhizn’ i tragediia sud’by [Far Eastern Koreans: Life and the Tragedyof Fate] (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk: Arkhivnyi otdel Administratsii Sakhalinskoi oblasti Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv
Sakhalinskoi oblasti, 1993), 134.
6 Bok Zi Kou, Koreitsy na Sakhaline [Koreans in Sakhalin] (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk: B. i., 1993), 38–40; Kuzin,
Dal’nevostochnye koreitsy, 198–199.
7 Kuzin, Dal’nevostochnye koreitsy, 200.
8 Andrei Lankov, “North Korean Mirage Collapses in Sakhalin,” The Korea Times, June 12, 2010.
9 Yulia Din, “Dreams of returning to the homeland: Koreans in Karafuto and Sakhalin” in Voices from the Shifting
Russo-Japanese Border: Karafuto/Sakhalin, eds. Svetlana Paichadze and Philip Seaton (London: Routledge, 2015),
177–194.
10 Bok Zi Kou, Koreitsy na Sakhaline, 107.
11 Dagikhudo Dagiev, Regime Transition in Central Asia: Stateness, Nationalism and Political Change in
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 58.

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Eurasia Border Review < Article >Federation is one of the most significant population movements that has occurred since the break-up
of the Soviet Union in 1991.”12
Table 1. The Korean Population in Central Asian States, 1939–2002
Country

1939

1959

1970

1979

1989

2002

Uzbekistan

73,000139,000

148,000

163,000

183,100

169,600

Kazakhstan

n/a74,00082,00092,000103,300

99,700Kyrgyzstan

n/a

n/a

7,528

n/a

n/a

19,000(’99)

Tadzhikistan

n/a

n/a

8,484

n/a

n/a

6,000(’99)

Turkmenistan

n/a

n/a

2,536

n/a

n/a-

3,000(’99)

RussianFederation

168,009('26)

n/a

n/a-

n/a

107,100

148,600

Sources: USSR Censuses; Songmoo Kho, Koreans in Soviet Central Asia (Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society,1987), 24, 46–47; Shiro Hanya and Natsuko Oka, Chuo Ajia-no Choshenjin: Sofu-no Chi-wo Toku Hanarete[Koreans of Central Asia: Moving Far Away from Grandfather’s Land], Yurashia Bukretto (Eurasian Booklet), 93(Tokyo: Yurashia kenkyū, 2006), 50; A.T. Kuzin, Dal’nevostochnye koreitsy: zhizn’ i tragediia sud’by [Far Eastern
Koreans: Life and the Tragedy of Fate] (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk: Dal’nevostochnoe Knizhnoe Izdatel’stvo, 1993), 15;
Jeanyoung Lee, “The Korean-Chinese Migration into the Russian Far East: A Human Security Perspective,” inSiberia and the Russian Far East in the Twenty-first Century: Partners in the “Community of Asia,” vol. 1.
Crossroads in Northeast Asia, ed. Akihiro Iwashita (Sapporo: Hokkaido University Slavic Research Center, 2005),
73. The figures might not be completely accurate as a significant number of Koreans who left Central Asian states
for Russia still hold their citizenship and registration in their countries of origin.

As it can be seen in Table 1, the number of Koreans in Uzbekistan has decreased by 2002,
while it has gradually increased in the Russian Federation.
Under the same set of push-pull factors, the movement from the Russian Far East, including
such remote areas as Sakhalin, to the economically developed big Russian cities is another observable
trend for all ethnic groups, including the Russian majority.
The process of choosing migration destination became more complex for Central Asian and
Sakhalin Koreans as a result of having an alternative option. The establishment of diplomatic relations
between the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the post-Soviet states in the early 1990s granted membersof the Korean diasporas an advantage, which Russians in the former Soviet republics did not have – anopportunity to visit the Republic of Korea, work and reside there. The labor shortages in various
economic sectors in this country served as an important pull factor.
Excluding economic factors, Koreans in Central Asia and Sakhalin select Russia or ROK as
their priority migration destination because they feel attached to Russian or Korean culture. The
younger generations of Central Asian and Sakhalin Koreans were educated in the Russian language tothe same standard as most Russians, as dictated by the assimilative policy of the Soviet government,13
12 MoyaFlynn, “Reconstructing ‘Homeland’ in the Russian Federation: Migrant-Centered Perspectives ofDisplacement and Resettlement,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33: 3 (2007): 461–462.
13 German Kim, “Ob istorii prinuditel’no-dobrovol’nogo zabveniia rodnogo iazyka koreitsami Kazakhstana [Onthe history of voluntarily and involuntarily oblivion of the native language by the Koreans of Kazakhstan],”
Diaspory [Diasporas] 1 (2003): 110–145.

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Igor Saveliev

which made them culturally attached to Russia. Additionally, the Soviet government’s strict control
over the population in this remote part of the country and the concentrated residence of Koreans in thecollective farms (kolkhozes) in Central Asia and mining towns in Sakhalin resulted in a high degree ofhomogeneity among Korean communities in the postwar period (1945–1991). Despite having
experienced dramatic regime changes in 1917 and the early 1990s, the Koreans of the former Soviet
Union managed to preserve few cultural traditions and looked for an opportunity to learn more about
Korean culture.
Cultural affinity might be just a symbolic identity marker, signifying diasporians’ interest in
the ancestral homeland, which is usually expressed, for example, in reading news about the country,
learning its language, preserving folklore and/or pursuing customs. However, when an individual faces
economic hardship and has to look for a new place of residence, one’s knowledge of the languages andcustoms becomes an important resource. The migration patterns of Koreans in the CIS, revealed in theinterviews, show that their movement is greatly influenced by cultural attachment. The following fiveroutes, four of which are transnational, can be considered most typical for their mobility: 1) Sakhalinand other peripheral areas of Russia → Moscow and big cities in “mainland” Russia; 2) Sakhalin(Russia) → ROK 3) Central Asia → Russia; 4) Central Asia → ROK; and 5) Central Asia → Russia→ Republic of Korea. These routes of migration keep transforming due to the changing economic
situation in various parts of the Republic of Korea, Russian Federation and other post-Soviet states. It
must be noted that after almost two decades (the 1990s – 2000s) of Koreans’ movement to Russia, their
numbers in various cities have increased significantly. Thus, the largest communities in their migration
destinations are to be found in Primorsky Krai (36,000), Khabarovsky Krai (15,000) in the Russian Far
East and Rostovskaia Oblast’ (11,700) and two cities with a special administrative status – Moscow(8,700) and Saint Petersburg (9,000–10,000) in European Russia.14
The next section will discuss the relationship between Korean migrants’ perception of“homeland” and the (re)construction of their diasporic spaces at the migration destination.
Reviving the Sense of “Homeland”
De Souza, exploring the notion of “home” for Caribbean returnees, notes that “mobility
decision-making is also influenced by individual voluntarism and perception” and the “evaluations of

14 Nikolai Bugai, Koreitsy stran SNG: obshchestvenno-“geograficheskii sintez” (nachalo 21 veka) [Koreans of the

CIS States: Social- “Geographic Synthesis,” (The Beginning of the Twenty-first Century)] (Moscow: Instituteistorii RAN Obshcherossiiskoe ob’edinenie koreitsev, 2007), 295–344; Pavel Leshakov, “Polozhenie koreiskikh
migrantov v Rossii [The Current State of Korean Migrants in Russia]” in Problema nezakonnoi migratsii: realii i
poisk [Problem of Irregular Migration in Russia: Reality and Search for Solutions] (Moscow: IOM, 2004), 327–
356; Min Young, Kultura rossiiskoi diaspory v Sankt-Peterburge [The Culture of Korean Diaspora in St.
Petersburg]. Paper presented at the international workshop “Asian Diasporas in Contemporary Context” held at St.
Petersburg State University, Faculty of Oriental Studies, November 10, 2008.

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Eurasia Border Review < Article >home and non-home.”15 It is also important, especially in the case of Koreans in the post-Soviet space,to take into consideration that “migrants use the “home/land” narrative to articulate both thedisplacement that has been experienced, and equally the perceived and actual resolution of thisdisplacement.”16 In the past, Central Asian Koreans experienced displacement at least twice, when they
were forced to move from Korea to the Russian Far East because of natural disasters and of Japanesecolonization and when they were forcibly resettled into Central Asia in 1937. Their ethnic group’s past
is a history of being displaced. Did they begin considering the RFE and Korean Peninsula as migration
destinations when economic factors forced them to resettle in the post-Soviet times? Do they still
maintain a cultural and emotional attachment to these lands? Indeed, some respondents, especiallythose from the older generation, mentioned their attachment to Primorsky Krai as one of the reasons
they selected this region for re-emigration to Russia.17 Statistics also confirm that most Central Asian
Koreans moved to the RFE voluntarily. For example, a survey carried out by Far Eastern scholars in1999 showed that only 16–17 percent of them moved to Primorsky Krai as refugees.18
As Conway and Potter point out, “the resultant diasporas are far flung and multi-modal andthe cross-border social spaces that are being formed are serving to define, more and more, the socialworld of those involved.”19 Indeed, as many interviewees pointed out,20 displacement and communal
suffering in the Soviet period made Soviet Koreans rely not on the state but on themselves, creating
their own strategies and “cross-border social spaces.” Koreans, moving from Central Asia to both
Russia and South Korea, relied mostly on themselves and their own networks. An example of state
support was the issuance of the Ordinance of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation “On the
Rehabilitation of Soviet Koreans” of 1 April 1993, which acknowledged the Soviet Korean victims of
the Stalinist purges and guaranteed assistance in moving to the Russian Federation. It somehow
facilitated their re-emigration, settlement and employment. Even in the late Soviet period, many ethnicorganizations of Koreans were established across the Soviet Union and the All-Soviet Union Congressof the Representatives of Ethnic Koreans took place in May of 1990.21
In the 1990s, as the Russian government tried to address the problem of dwindling population,some programs to facilitate the return migration of compatriots (sootechestvenniki) from the former
Soviet republics or “the Near Abroad” (“Blizhnee Zarubezh’e” in Russian) to Russia were established.
15 Roger-Mark De Souza, “No Place Like Home: Returnee R&R (Retention and Rejection) in the Caribbean

Homeland” in The Experience of Return Migration: Caribbean Perspectives, eds. Robert B. Potter and others(Farnham: Ashgate, 2005), 136–137.
16 Flynn, “Reconstructing ‘Homeland,’” 463.
17 A series of interviews carried out in Busan and RFE, September 2007.
18 Angelina Vashchuk, “Adaptatsiia etnicheskikh migrantov iz Rossii i SNG v Primor’e (90-e gody 20 v.) [TheAdaptation of Ethnic Migrants from Russia and CIS in Primor’e, the 1990s]” in Adaptatsiia etnicheskikh
migrantov v Primor’e v XX v. [The Adaptation of Ethnic Migrants in Primor’e in the Twentieth Century](Vladivostok: IIAE DVO RAN, 2000), 160.
19 Dennis Conway and Robert Potter, “Return of the Next Generations: Transnational Migration and Developmentin the Twenty-first Century,” in Return Migration of the Next Generations: Twenty-first Century Transnational
Mobility, eds. Dennis Conway and Robert Potter (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 1.
20 Interviews in Busan (November 2007) and the Russian Far East (September 2007).
21 Hanya and Oka, Chuo Ajia-no Chosenjin, 46.

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Igor Saveliev

The Russian governmental agencies considered all Russian-speaking people, including ethnic Koreans,compatriots, whose return to Russia “would be a natural re-emigration to their homeland.”22 On theother hand, ethnic Koreans themselves began considering Russia as a “homeland.” On the local level,
the government of Primorsky Krai attempted to revive the symbolic significance of the Krai as their“homeland” (rodina in Russian) in the hearts of Central Asian Koreans. In the early 1990s, Krai’s
governor E.I. Nazdratenko welcomed Koreans to Primorsky Krai.
The borderland nature of Primorsky Krai and its proximity to the border once turned as adisadvantage for Korean residents. In 1937, the imagined threat of Soviet Koreans’ cooperation with
the Japanese army stationed in Korea served as a formal reason for their resettlement to Central Asia.
As Toyota notes, “the political construction of the border in ways that allows it to make distinction
between inclusion and exclusion is a means of legitimizing the structure of territorial power and its
embodiment in the state.”23 For thousands of Korean residents, the political construction of Primor’e
had turned exclusive during the Stalinist purges, yet it suddenly appeared to be inclusive during the
democratization of the early 1990s. Major reasons for the local government to invite them to return tothe region were the movement called “ethnic minorities’ renaissance (natsional’noe vozrozhdenie)”24
and the region’s dramatic depopulation in the post-Soviet period. The re-emigration of several hundred
thousand “compatriots” from Central Asia was expected to compensate the natural outflow of theRussian population from the region.25 It was even more desirable because of their attachment to Russian
culture.
In the early 1990s, the proposal of the Krai's governor to have ethnic Koreans to return was
backed by a set of specific policies. A special commission was formed by the Krai’s government toorganize the settlement of returning Koreans “without causing any interest conflicts with the local
population.”26 As the housing in the Krai was expensive, in 1996, the commandment of the Far Eastern
Military District permitted Korean returnees to occupy the abandoned apartment blocks previously
used by military personnel in the region. There was also a plan to build six homogenous Korean villages

22 Interview with Professor Nikolai F. Bugai, Moscow, Russian Science Academy Research Institute of Russian

History, November 15, 2008; Flynn, “Reconstructing ‘Homeland,’” 465.
23 Mika Toyota, “Ambivalent Categories: Hill Tribes and Illegal Migrants in Thailand,” in Borderscapes: Hidden
Geographies and Politics at Territory’s Edge, eds. Prem Kumar Rajaram and Carl Grundy-Warr (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 92.
24 Tamara Troiakova, “‘Koreiskaia derevnia’ v Primor’e: odin iz proektov ‘natsional’nogo vozrozhdeniia’ [‘Korean
Village’ in Primor’e: A project of ‘Ethnic Minority’s Renaissance],” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie 4 (2008): 37–43.
Ethnic minority groups in Russia were encouraged to pursue their cultural traditions and preserve their cultural
heritage through establishing ethnic associations and organizing various events.
25 See Kazuhiro Kumo, “Migratsiia naseleniia v postsovetskoi Rossii [Migrations of Population in post-Soviet
Russia]” in Ekomicheskaia nauka sovremennoi Rossii 2 [The Economics of Contemporary Russia 2] (Moscow:
Central Institute of Economics and Mathematics, 2007), 132–145.
26 Larisa Gerasimova, “Rol’ organov vlasti v obustroistve migrantov v Primorskom Krae (1990-e gody) [The Roleof State Agencies in the Settlement of Migrants in Primorsky Krai (the 1990s)]” in Adaptasiia etnicheskikh
migrantov v Primor’e v XX v. [The Adaptation of Ethnic Migrants in Primor’e in the Twentieth Century](Vladivostok: DVO RAN, 2000), 179–180.

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Eurasia Border Review < Article >in the Krai27 with the financial assistance from the Association of Small and Medium-Size Construction
Companies in the Republic of Korea and other South Korean sponsors. A village called “Friendship”(“Druzhba”) was built near Ussuriisk. Initially there were plans to construct houses for 460 families.
However, due to the financial crisis of 1998 and some bureaucratic barriers, only 33 houses were built.
Twenty-five of them were granted to Korean families from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.28 In 1990, a
Korean Cultural Center was established in Ussuriisk, which supported a Korean-language school,
Korean traditional dance group "Arirang" and a Korean-language newspaper Koryo Shinmun,29 making
the city of Ussuriisk a new important diasporians' space at their migration destination.
As shown above, settlement policies by the government of the Krai, to some extent, affected
the selection of destination by Central Asian Korean returnees and facilitated their adjustment to a newsocial environment and cultural activities. However, in reality, Central Asian Koreans faced multiple
obstacles to settlement and integration. The passport registration system (propiska), a hallmark ofSoviet-era command economy, often impeded settlement and naturalization of migrants in Primorsky
Krai. As residence and entitlements remain under strict state control, this institutional factor works to
the disadvantage of Korean returnees, complicating their employment and everyday life. At a seminaron migration policy and citizenship in the city of Artyom, it was pointed out that over 11,000 Korean
migrants from Central Asia had difficulties obtaining Russian citizenship in Primorsky Krai.30
Despite this drawback, the number of Koreans in the Krai grew significantly. While in 1959,
there were 6,597 Koreans in the Krai, 31 because of the local authorities’ policies, their numbers
increased from 8,125 in 1989 to 18,000 in 1996 and already 26,000 in 1997. Some sources evenestimate that there were 36,000–40,000 Korean migrants from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in the Kraiin the early 2000s.32 They became the largest migrant group from “the Near Abroad” in the region in
1999, overcoming the two other big migrant minority groups – 25,000 Armenians and 21,000
Azerbaijanis.33
However, the plan to create homogeneous Korean villages was later considered by the local
law-enforcement agencies and locals as contradicting the region’s value of mixed residence of diverse
ethnic groups. A highly ranked local official addressed Krai’s governor E.I. Nazdratenko in the official
letter requesting to restrict the entrance of foreigners into the Krai “due to their aspiration to build
religious labor villages” on deserted lands.34 The concept of Korean villages was also criticized in a

27 Troiakova, “Koreiskaia derevnia,” 40. In 1997, the settlement program was named “On the Non-Restitution

Transfer of Open Military Towns in the Territory of Primorsky Krai to the Krai’s Foundation of Russian Koreans.”
28 A series of interviews carried out in Friendship Village, September 2007; Troiakova, “Koreiskaia derevnia,” 39–41.
29 Interview in Friendship Village, September 2007; Troiakova, ”Koreiskaia derevnia,” 39.
30 Troiakova, “Koreiskaia derevnia,” 39.
31 Ibid., 38.
32 Interview with Viktor, aged 55, fourth-generation Central Asian Korean, self-employed; Troiakova, “Koreiskaia
derevnia,” 38–39; Vashchuk, “Adaptatsiia etnicheskikh,” 159.
33 Vashchuk, “Adaptatsiia etnicheskikh,” 159.
34 Troiakova, ”Koreiskaia derevnia,” 42.

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Igor Saveliev

group letter to the Ussuriisk-based newspaper Kommunar.35 At the same time, Tamara Troiakova quotes
a Russian Korean entrepreneur who explained that the expectations of Central Asian Korean returnees
for some privileges had been too high. The mixed residence with the Russian majority and other ethnic
groups should have been considered a precondition for building new villages.36 Thus, the governmental
policies greatly affected the selection of a migration destination by Central Asian and Sakhalin Koreans.
Thanks to them, some Korean communities were reconstructed in the Krai sixty years after they theirforced resettlement to Central Asia. However, as shown below, this movement could not develop intoa large-scale migration, as predicted by the local government and some Korean community leaders in
the early and mid-1990s.
“Old Memories” and Economic Realities: Construction of Diasporic Spaces
As mentioned above, some respondents from the older generation stated that their attachment
to Primorsky Krai was a major reason for selecting the region for settlement in the late 1980s–early
1990s. A few “early birds” managed to return to Primor’e after the 1950s as migration restrictions were
relaxed for the first time. 37 Even earlier, the Soviet authorities recruited some college-educated
Communist party members of Korean origin to develop industries in the Far East. Thus, a son of suchan expert remembers:38
The [Communist – I.S.] Party sent party functionaries here, to the Far East, to develop
industries. And my father worked in many places across Primorky Krai.
All these diverse groups of Korean migrants that moved to Primor’e in the Soviet and postSoviet periods or were sent there by the government, identified Primor’e as the “homeland” of theirparents and a desirable place of residence. It helped them to develop their cross-border networks, whichconnected their communities in Central Asia and Primor’e, and later strengthened their communities.
However, the rate of economic development should be taken into consideration. As mentioned
in the first section, labor demand always plays a powerful role in the selection of a migration destination.
Most interviews carried out in various regions of Russia showed that big cities in the European part ofthe country with developed infrastructure proved to be more attractive for Central Asian Koreans,
especially those who had obtained a college education. As the study suggests, Korean migrants enjoy
comparatively higher incomes because of their professional skills and higher lifestyle, in contrast to
their origin in Central Asia. They persistently demonstrated their willingness to establish themselves in

35 Ibid.
36 Ibid., 41.
37 Interview with Viktor, aged 55, fourth-generation Central Asian Korean, self-employed. See also Troiakova,“Koreiskaia derevnia,” 38.
38 Interview with Fedor, Central Asian Korean, male, 56, university professor, September 2007.

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Eurasia Border Review < Article >big cities. 39 A respondent in Vladivostok qualified the place of Primorsky Krai in the post-Soviet
migration of Central Asian Koreans in the following way:40
Where can a Korean go? Those who have connections move to Moscow; those who don't haveany because of old memories try hard here. They, in general, are the poorest group of those[Koreans - I.S.] who are moving...
As the same respondent states, Koreans who were unable to rely on their compatriot networks
in big cities and selected Primorky Krai as a destination had humble incomes. Moreover, in Primorsky
Krai itself, instead of the administrative centers of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk, the much smaller cityof Ussuriisk became a major destination for thousands of Korean migrants from Central Asia. Here,they were attracted by the low cost of living as the narrative of a respondent confirms:41
Look, those migrants who arrived from Central Asia settle neither in Vladivostok nor
anywhere else; they go farther, straight to Ussuriisk. Because they can’t buy even a garage forthe sum that they obtained, having sold their three-bedroom apartments in Tashkent. Besides,
they have to pay for their transportation. That is why those who live in our region are in a very
hard situation.
However, as many investment projects in the Krai did not succeed, the region could notprovide enough jobs to migrants. Many of them found employment in the informal or semi-informal
sector of the Krai, for example, in open-air markets that sold inexpensive Chinese goods. Their usual
monthly income comprised no more than some 15,000 rubles (approximately $500) in 2007.42 They
got even more jobs in that market after the introduction of the regulations of 2006 and 2009, prohibiting
foreigners to work in Russian markets.43 They were hired by Chinese petty entrepreneurs, who, while
maintaining control of their business outlets often under the disguise of porters, needed to hire local
shop assistants. Having East Asian roots and being ready to work for comparatively low wages, Korean
migrants were perfectly suited for this role.
Even with these economic disadvantages, many Central Asian Koreans, especially of the older
generation, settled down in Ussuriisk and other small towns of Primor’e. It is in Primor’e where they
39 Alena Chagay, “Social Status and Labor Mobility of Uzbek Koreans in the Post-Soviet Era, Twenty-fifth

Biennial AKSE Conference Proceedings.” Paper presented at the Association for Korean Studies in Europe,
Moscow State University, June 17–20, 2011, 1, 182.
40 Interview with Viktor, aged 55, fourth-generation Central Asian Korean, self-employed, September 2007.
41 Ibid.
42 Leshakov, “Polozhenie koreiskikh migrantov v Rossii,” 327–356; Feng Anquan, “Churo Kokkyo Boeki:
Kokuryukosho-no tai-Roshia kokkyo boeki-wo chushin-ni [China-Russian Cross-border Trade: Focusing on the
Heilongjiang Province].” Annals of the Japanese Association for Russia and East European Studies 36: 146–158.
43 Feng Anquan, ibid.; “Vstupaet v silu riad ogranichenii na trudovuiu deiatel’nost’ inostrantsev v 2009 [SomeRestriction on the Employment of Foreigners is Introduced in Russia in 2009].” Accessed January 29, 2009:https://pravo.ru/news/view/7306/

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encountered Chinese of Korean descent (Joseonjok) at the Chinese markets 44 and with Sakhalin
Koreans45 in Far Eastern cities. Although there is little interaction between ethnic Korean returnees toPrimor’e and Joseonjok (and South Koreans), the returnees found themselves in the same kind of
multiethnic environment of a border region that existed in the pre-revolutionary and early Soviet
periods.
In Ussuriisk, for example, some of them purchased inexpensive wooden houses, living side
by side with their fellow relatives, who also moved to Primor’e. This is the only city in the region thatprovides a low-cost dormitory to involuntary and low-income migrants.46 Settling down with otherfamily members, Koreans were able to successfully reproduce some forms of community life that they
enjoyed in Central Asia. Together with “old memories,” these new diasporic spaces provided a senseof stability to some of them, especially to the people of the older generation.
However, young and middle-aged ethnic Koreans often look for new migration destinations
soon after their movement from Central Asia to Primorsky Krai.47 In this respect, the Primorsky Kraias a border region provides a variety of opportunities in terms of the proximity to the Republic of Korea
and other countries. For them, like for a respondent quoted at the very beginning of paper, “homelandis where they live.”
Another “Home(land)”?
A food outlet’s sign in a multiethnic area in Seoul is written in Russian – “The Native Land.”Inside the small restaurant, the food reminds you of Central Asian cuisine. The bowls are Uzbekistanmade. Vodka is popular liquor there. The people who run it moved to Seoul from Central Asia. What is“the native land” for them and their customers – Central Asia, where they were born, or South Korea,
where they work, live and run their businesses? The restaurant’s name is a manifestation of theirmultiple identity and complex perception of “homeland.”The dwindling South Korean population and structural requirements of the country’s economy
created a large demand for non-skilled and semi-skilled labor. In the late 1990s, the South Korean
government introduced a two-year F-4 visa for trainees under the Industrial Technical Training Program(ITTP). In September of 2007, in addition to the F-4 visa, restricting the employment of its holders tounskilled jobs, a five-year H2-1 visa for people of Korean descent (gyopo or “overseas compatriots”)
was introduced. This encouraged many individuals of Korean ancestry from Russia and Central Asianstates to move to the ROK for long-term stay and work, and later sponsor their relatives to join them.
Some Central Asian Koreans used the RFE as a transit point on their way to the ROK. For example, afamily from the Tashkent Oblast’ in Uzbekistan moved first to Ussuriisk as had many of their neighborsaround the year 2000. A few years later, they re-emigrated to a big South Korean city and opened theirown bakery there. The black bread and sausages that they began producing became popular in the city
44 Leshakov, “Polozhenie koreiskikh migrantov v Rossii,” 328.
45 As interviews showed (Interviews in the Tashkent Oblast’, November 2009).
46 Vashchuk, “Adaptatsiia etnicheskikh,” 183.
47 For example, Chagay, “Social Status.”

39Eurasia Border Review < Article >and other areas in Korea.48 This pattern of re-emigration in search of a new “homeland” was quite
typical. Not everyone was lucky enough to run his own business or assist his relatives in running one.
Many Korean migrants from the CIS found only unskilled jobs at construction sites and plants.
Despite facing difficulties in communicating with the locals and other obstacles, many see the
ROK as an opportunity. A female respondent working as a waitress in a small restaurant and three male
respondents working in a small plant stated that even temporary low-paid work in the ROK allowed
migrants to support their families still living in the former Soviet Union, and to accumulate savings for
future settlement in South Korea.49 Another female respondent said that she saw more opportunities inSouth Korea than in her native Uzbekistan and shared her plan to save a certain amount of money andopen a coffee shop or restaurant.50 A male respondent from Tashkent noted that he was really grateful
to his employer for taking him onto a tour across South Korea and showing him the beauties of hisancestral homeland.51
Most unskilled workers and small business owners of the younger generation have struggled
to obtain permanent residence status and stable, well-paying jobs. Their attitudes towards the hostsociety and their plans for the future vary from person to person. Some complain that they are underpaid,even when compared with other groups of migrants such as Chinese of Korean descent (Joseonjok).52
In South Korea, ethnic Koreans from the CIS and from China become competitors. The language
barrier and little knowledge of contemporary Korean culture usually impedes integration. Marked
status differences are apparent between educated Korean-language-speaking skilled professionals andentrepreneurs and those lacking sufficient proficiency in the Korean language. Inability to speak
Korean fluently naturally affects their job advancement prospect and makes those less proficient in thelanguage reliant on Korean-speaking compatriots.
Central Asian Koreans usually prefer to construct their own social spaces. For example, theowner of a Russian-food outlet in a city not far from Seoul stated that almost all his customers are
migrants from the post-Soviet states. At night, they order Russian food and spend long hours (until fivein the morning) on the weekends dancing and socializing with each other.53 Similarly, three visitors of
the Uzbek-Korean food restaurant in Seoul explained that they liked to spend time on Sundays anddays-off at the restaurant because there they are able to communicate with the restaurant owner, her
employees and other visitors in Russian. During the interview, they began talking and sharing drinks
with newly arrived customers who they had not previously known. These food outlets represent an
informal space where migrants from Central Asia reproduce their lifestyle and ways of socializing,
which differ from the surrounding South Korean society. Here, in this temporal informal space they
feel “at home” – at their “native land.”48 Interview with Inna, aged 44, fourth-generation Central Asian Korean, self-employed, April 2008.
49 For example, interviews with Svetlana, aged 46, second-generation Sakhalin Korean, salaried employee (April2008) and Ivan, aged 61, second-generation Central Asian Korean, plant worker (April 2012).
50 Interview with Kseniia, aged 26, fifth-generation Central Asian Korean, salaried employee, April 2008.
51 Interview with Ivan, aged 61, second-generation Central Asian Korean, plant worker, April 2012.
52 Ibid.
53 Interview with a food outlet owner, April 2008.

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On the contrary, as a series of interviews showed, first- or second-generation returnees from
Sakhalin, who have been granted Korean citizenship and provided with a pension and some otherallowances, have successfully established themselves. Many have learnt the Korean language in theirchildhood and, though it was the North Korean version of the language, they can still communicate
with the local population. The difference of languages and the gap in their experience of the Koreansociety often do not allow them to establish relationships with the local people.
They have long awaited repatriation to South Korea.54 Four and a half decades after the endof the war, when diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the ROK were established in 1990,
their repatriation became reality. Not all first-generation Sakhalin Koreans, who were born in Korea,
or their children chose to return to the ROK for permanent residence. Many were not in very good
health because of age and were reluctant to separate from their children and grandchildren. However,interviews showed that those who returned to the ROK and obtained South Korean citizenship wereattracted by an opportunity to live in their ancestral homeland and be protected by the developed social
welfare system. Members of the first and second generations born before 15 August 1945 then received
permission to move to a specially built “Native Village (Gohwangmaeul)”55 in the city of Ansan, andlater to municipal apartment blocks in Incheon and other cities under a Korean government support
program. “Native Village’ is another symbolic representation of “homeland,” another attempt (like inthe borderland region of Primor’e) to revive the psychological attachment to a new place of residence.
The returnees are granted South Korean citizenship; they enjoy a monthly pension and other allowances.
Will a “Native Village” become a real “home” for them? Their initial separation from their families in
the ROK was now followed by a new traumatic family rupture – this time from their children andgrandchildren who were ineligible for the program of repatriation to South Korea. Age limits in theselection of returnees by the governmental agencies and the inability of their relatives from younger
generations to join them in the ROK have caused new family disruptions and psychological suffering.56
In the 2000s, the so-called Russian ethnic business districts appeared in Seoul and Busan,
being evidence of the strengthening of the community of Russian-speaking returnees in the ROK. The
shift of some Koreans from contract employment to self employment can be observed. It shows thatthat their communities in the ROK have been transforming not only numerically but also structurally,
resulting in more community stratification.

54 YuliaDin, Koreiskaia diaspora Sakhalina: problema repatriatsii i integratsii v sovetskoe i rossiiskoe
obshchestvo [The Korean Diaspora in Sakhalin: The Problem of Repatriation and Integration in Soviet andRussian Society] (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk: Yuzhno-sakhalinskaia oblastnaia tipografiia, 2015), 107.
55 The construction of “Native Village [Gohwangmaeul]” was funded by the Japanese government as compensation
to Sakhalin Koreans for their sufferings during the war and postwar periods. It represents eight apartment blocks
and a community center built in the city of Ansan.
56 For example, interview with Ilia, aged 73, Sakhalin Korean, retired, April 2008.

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Eurasia Border Review < Article >Concluding Remarks
Migrants move across physical spaces to reach their destinations. They construct, shape andre-shape new spaces, formal and informal ones, virtual or even hidden ones. Return migration might
be seen as an easier pattern for integration into a host society. Then why do return migrants need toconstruct their own social spaces in the country that is perceived to be their “homeland”? The longterm residence outside their ancestral homeland signifies a rupture between them and the society thatused to be their natural social environment decades before. The more time passes, the more generations
are born and raised outside the “homeland,” the more difficult it becomes to “rediscover” their
homeland.
This paper examined two projects aimed to revive and/or strengthen psychological attachmentof ethnic Koreans to a region that used to be their “ancestral homeland,” which were launched by local
and central governments in the Russian Federation and the Republic of Korea. In Primorsky Krai, theproject and the idea of “homeland” to some degree helped consolidate diverse communities of Koreansand construct social spaces. In general, the low cost of living has allowed Koreans to reproduce theirformer lifestyle. Moreover, the psychological attachment to the “homeland” of their parents andgrandparents initially made Primorsky Krai attractive for them. Nonetheless, Sakhalin Koreans do nothave any special attachment to this region. Their homeland is Sakhalin. Primorsky Krai is just acomparatively proximate part of mainland Russia that provides more opportunities to study and workthan their remote native island. The Krai’s nature of a borderland has provided a place for inter-ethnic
interactions and contacts with people from neighboring East Asian states. However, the project of a“homeland” did not prove to be very successful due the combination of various factors – the financial
crisis of 1998, insufficient administrative support and, most importantly, the general weakness of theregional economy. This also demonstrates the existence of a gap in economic development between the“center,” which includes Moscow and a few other industrial areas, and the periphery in Russia. Welleducated young and middle-aged Koreans, like most Russians, Tatars or Jews, usually prefer to moveto “the center.”
The younger-generation of diasporians seem to be looking for more opportunities to reemigrate outside the CIS, in particular to the ROK, in contrast to the elderly, who prefer to stay at theirfirst migration destination. Seeing growing economic opportunities in the ROK, many Korean returnees
to Primorsky Krai have sought out employment opportunities there, creating new transnational spaces.
Their communities in the ROK are characterized by the comparatively high degree of closure. Theirdiasporic spaces have much more rigid boundaries. The question of whether they see their Korean
origin more as an advantage to realize some of their specific economic goals or an attempt to find atrue “homeland” remains an object for further studies.
In both countries, we see the fragmentation of migrants’ spaces. The diversity of Koreans in
Russia – the differences of “place” from which they discover new spaces, the differences in educationand language proficiency and the generational differences – all of which affects their sense of“home/land.” This diversity inevitably impedes the unity of a single diasporic space. The case of the
Koreans of the former Soviet Union shows that, even moving by themselves, migrants are not entirely

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free to create spaces. Many various actors are involved. Authorities, police, employers – all of whomshape and re-shape the trajectories of their movement, their sense of “homeland” and social spaces thatthey attempt to construct.

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