page_title: Koryo-saram
section_title: Russia
hierarchical_section_title: Koryo-saram / Post-deportation / Russia
caption_attribution_description: English: Viktor Tsoi in Moscow, 1986 Русский: Виктор Цой в Москве, 1986 год
context_page_description: Koryo-saram is the name which ethnic Koreans in the post-Soviet states use to refer to themselves. The term is composed of two constituents: "Koryo", which is one of the names of Korea, and "saram", meaning either "person/people".
  Approximately 500,000 ethnic Koreans reside in the former Soviet Union, primarily in the now-independent states of Central Asia. There are also large Korean communities in Southern Russia, Russian Far East, the Caucasus, and southern Ukraine. These communities can be traced back to the Koreans who were living in the Russian Far East during the late 19th century.
  There is also a separate ethnic Korean community on the island of Sakhalin, typically referred to as Sakhalin Koreans. Some may identify as Koryo-saram, but many do not. Unlike the communities on the Russian mainland, which consist mostly of immigrants from the late 19th century and early 20th century, the ancestors of the Sakhalin Koreans came as immigrants from Gyeongsang and Jeolla provinces in the late 1930s and early 1940s, forced into service by the Japanese government to work in coal mines in Sakhalin in order to fill labour shortages caused by World War II.
context_section_description: The 2002 census gave a population of 148,556 Koreans in Russia, of which 75,835 were male and 72,721 female. More than half were living in Asian Russia. Meanwhile, the 2010 census gave a population of 153,156 Koreans in Russia, this time more than half were living in European Russia instead, but Russian Far East remained the federal district with highest number of Koreans. The Korean population there trace their roots back to a variety of sources. Aside from roughly 33,000 CIS nationals, mostly migrants retracing in reverse the 1937 deportation of their ancestors, between 4,000 and 12,000 North Korean migrant labourers can be found in the region. Smaller numbers of South Koreans and ethnic Koreans from China have also come to the region to settle, invest, and/or engage in cross-border trade.
caption: Viktor Tsoi, singer and songwriter who co-founded Kino, one of the most popular and musically influential bands in the history of Russian music
exif: {}