1. When Russia Ruled : Education and Social Mobility of Soviet Korean Children in Central Asia
Jae PARK
CIES Panel : Education of ethnic minorities within Asia: Structures, lived experiences and future directions
Vancouver, 7 March 2016
The Hong Kong Institute of Education ranked 3rd in Asia and 15th in the world in Education
(QS World University Rankings by Subject 2015)

3. Research Field Trip: March-April 2010 Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
Participants: 4th generation Soviet Koreans of Far East Russia deported by Stalin in 1937
History and Sociology

4. Questions (1) Who are the Korean ethnic minority people in Kyrgyzstan?
(2) What has been and is their situation in former Soviet republic— agency and education?

5. Koryo saram (Soviet Koreans)?

6. Treaty of Beijing 1860
Russia gets right to the territories Ussuri krai and southern parts of Primorye. Now, Russia has a border with Korea.

7. Demographics
1863, the southern edge of River Ussuri, which also borders on Tizinhe: 13 Korean families.
1864, 7 villages in the Posyets area. Przheval’skiy who visited the region in 1867 states that there are 1,800 Koreans in 3 of the village alone per his estimate
1865, 60 families in that area.
1866, 100 families (Kim Sin Hwa)
1869, poor harvest & famine in North Korea.
1870, 8,700 Koreans, 4 new settlements

8. Demographics 1904-5 Russo Japanese War
1905 Korea-Japan Treaty - Korea loses independence. Korean patriots & freedom fighters went to RFE
Korean independence Movements focused on anti-Japan political themes
/3 of Koreans in RFE do not have Russian citizenship (20,109 out of total 64,309 Koreans have Russian citizenship)
April Japanese troops landed in Vladivostok followed later by American, British, French and Italian troops. The Entente Intervention lasted for 4 years to support the ‘Whites’. The Japanese withdrew in October of 1922

9. Why to RFE?
Three Burdens which in addition to bad harvests were the cause of immigration to RFE.
Tax on land cultivation
Military draft
Forced requisition of grain from farmers
religious persecution of Catholics ( Koreans converted to Catholicism in 19th century ) was one more reason for emigration
1st 3 governors of DalKrai/Priamur felt that Koreans would be helpful in developing the Far East Russia when skilled labor was in short supply; Koreans were welcomed

10. Life in Russian Far East
Koreans were tenant farmers, Russians were the landowners
Taxes of all kinds imposed at will on Koreans
Rice cultivation.
Koreans had already assimilated by early 1900’s. e.g., converted to Orthodox religion, changed his name to a Russian name and surname
Korean town in Vladivostok called Sinhanchon with Korean primary schools, churches, newspaper printing house, concert hall and football pitch

11. Solzhenitsyn: Gulag Archipelago (pp. 386-387) Korean mud houses

12. Life in Russian Far East
Main occupations for urban Koreans at the turn of the century were: fishing, wrapping cigarettes, laundering, manual work, brewing soju and small businesses
1928 Soviet survey of rice growers in RFE: a total of 11,378 rice growers, 6 are Chinese, 1,196 are Russians and 10,176 are Koreans
By 1930’s Korean kholkhozes are the major agricultural producers in RFE. In Posyets, 95% of population is Korean, 97.%5 of area had been organized into cooperatives/kolkhozes
In 1932, the Soviet authorities organize official Korean theater and Sonbong (Vanguard), a Korean language socialist/communist newspaper
Manchukuo 1932

13. 1937 A political and politicized decision
Resolution No cc signed by Molotov and Stalin “of preventing the infiltration of Japanese spies into the Far East”
Resolution no cc signed by Molotov and Petrunichev: “… the complete removal of all Koreans from the entire Far Eastern region, including remote areas …”

14. Deportation as forced diaspora
In the September 1937 deportation, 2/3 of Soviet Koreans had Soviet citizenship

15. 110 h (8,354.9 km) via а/д Амур/М58 and a/d Baykal/а/д Байкал/М55

16. Deportation of 1937 was a Logical Continuation of Tsarist and Soviet Nationality Policy in the Russian Far East(Kim)
There had been other plans to deport the Koreans:
1st prior to 1904’s Russo Japanese war
2nd during Leninist reforms
3rd during Stalin’s collectivization of Kim, G. N., & King, R. (2001). Koryo Saram: Koreans in the Former USSR. Korean and Korean American Studies Bulletin, 12(2/3).

18. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan
500,000 Koryo saram live in the former Soviet Union lands
Two-thirds of them continue in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan

20. I am 1/8 Chinese, 1/8 Korean, ¾ Kazakh Tartar

22. Where are they now?

23. Chang, J., & Park, J. (2013). Soviet Koreans: Redemption through Labour and Sport. The Eurasia Studies Society Journal, 2(3), 1-21.

27. Research Findings : Oral History
Causes of diaspora are seldom lineal usually both Voluntary (well being) and Involuntary (survival, politically forced)
A diaspora is likely to generate subsequent diasporas
‘diaspora-as-diversity’ versus ‘diaspora-as-exile’
Adaptive processes in diaspora-as-exile are not uniform
Soviet Koreans in Central Asia: from one Korenizatsiya (коренизация, politically forced nativization) to the next

28. Education and Mobility
Young Soviet Koreans’ educational values are still linked to their social mobility dreams. These values are :
Asian students and parents are known for holding education in high regard. They value education as a way to assure not only material betterment but also and above all, social recognition, esteem and reward (Park, 2009).
Such values are rooted in the consciousness of Asians in diaspora.
Regardless of perils of politics or geographical landscapes , education has consistently been regarded by Asian diaspora communities as a pathway to upward social mobility in its many dimensions and details (Hurh, 1998) (Gao, 2008)

29. Today
Post Soviet “Kyrgyzstan for Kyrgyz” political ideology has effectively destroyed ‘Soviet Multiculturalism’
In this context, ‘Good education’ no longer implies better opportunities
Exclusion type of Acculturation (worse in Tashkent)

30. Everything is illusory except power -Lenin

31. Conclusion In diaspora lands, Agency is strongly affected by contexts
Efforts to adapt / compromise often override the ideal of freedom, choice and identity
Soviet Koreans educational values are NOT totally annihilated by politics or ideologies