Koryo-saram ( ; ; ) or Koryoin (; ) are ethnic Koreans of the mainland former Soviet Union who descend from Koreans who lived in the Russian Far East.
Koreans began settling in the Russian Far East in the late 19th century. Their numbers increased as Koreans fled the Japanese colonization of Korea beginning in 1910. A number of Koryo-saram became significant Korean independence activists, such as Hong Beom-do and Chŏng Sangjin. In 1937, they were all deported to Central Asia. They have since dispersed throughout the former Soviet Union, with significant populations in Siberia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan.
Approximately 500,000 Koryo-saram reside in the former Soviet Union, primarily in the now-independent states of Central Asia. There are also large Korean communities in Southern Russia (around Volgograd), the Russian Far East (around Vladivostok), the Caucasus, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and southern Ukraine. While the ability to speak Korean has become increasingly rare amongst modern Koryo-saram, they have retained some elements of Korean culture, including Korean names. Koryo-saram cuisine has become popular throughout the former Soviet Union, with the dish morkovcha now widely available in grocery stores there. Many Koryo-saram have moved temporarily or permanently to South Korea for economic or cultural reasons. The Russo-Ukrainian War, especially the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, motivated several thousand Korean Ukrainians to move to South Korea by early 2023.
Sakhalin Koreans also exist on the island of Sakhalin in Russia, but they are often considered a separate ethnic group. The majority of this population originated from when Sakhalin was partially under Japanese rule, and did not experience the forced deportation to Central Asia. Some of them identify as Koryo-saram, but many do not. This has led to the term materikovye () for Koryo-saram, meaning "continentals".
Autonym The term by which they refer to themselves is composed of two Korean words: , a historical name for Korea, and , meaning "person" or "people".
The word Koryo in Koryo-saram originated from the name of the Goryeo (Koryŏ) Dynasty from which Korea was also derived. The name Soviet Korean was also used, more frequently before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russians may also lump Koryo-saram under the general label koreytsy (); however, this usage makes no distinctions between ethnic Koreans of the local nationality and the Korean nationals (citizens of North Korea or South Korea).
In Standard Korean, the term Koryo-saram is typically used to refer to historical figures from the Goryeo dynasty; to avoid ambiguity, Korean speakers use a word Goryeoin (, meaning the same as Koryo-saram) to refer to ethnic Koreans in the post-Soviet states. However, the Sino-Korean morpheme -in () is not productive in Koryo-mal, the dialect spoken by Koryo-saram, and as a result, only a few (mainly those who have studied Standard Korean) refer to themselves by this name; instead, Koryo-saram has come to be the preferred term.
History Immigration to the Russian Far East and Siberia
The early 19th century saw the decline of the Korean Joseon dynasty. A small population of wealthy elite owned the farmlands in the country, and poor peasants found it difficult to survive. Koreans leaving the country in this period were obliged to move toward Russia, as the border with China was sealed by the Qing Dynasty. However, the first Koreans in the Russian Empire, 761 families totalling 5,310 people, had actually migrated to Qing territory; the land they had settled on was ceded to Russia by the Convention of Peking in 1860. Many peasants considered Siberia to be a land where they could lead better lives, and so they subsequently migrated there. According to Russian sources early as 1863, 13 Korean households were recorded in Posyet, near the Bay of Novgorod. These numbers rose dramatically, and by 1869 Koreans composed 20% of the population of the Primorsky Krai. Prior to the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway, Koreans outnumbered Russians in the Russian Far East; the local governors encouraged them to naturalize. The village of Blagoslovennoe was founded in 1870 by Korean migrants. Another Korean village near Zolotoy Rog that Russians called Koreyskaya slabodka (Корейская слабодка, literally means Korean village) and what Koreans called Gaecheok-ri (開拓里,개척리) was officially recognized by the Vladivostok authorities. The 1897 Russian Empire Census found 26,005 Korean speakers (16,225 men and 9,780 women) in the whole of Russia.
In the early 20th century, both Russia and Korea came into conflict with Japan. Following the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1907, Russia enacted an anti-Korean law at the behest of Japan, under which the land of Korean farmers was confiscated and Korean labourers were laid off. However, Korean migration to Russia continued to grow; 1914 figures showed 64,309 Koreans (among whom 20,109 were Russian citizens). Even the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution did nothing to slow migration; after the repression of the 1919 March First Movement in Japanese-colonised Korea, migration actually intensified. Korean leaders in Vladivostok's Sinhanch'on () neighbourhood also provided support to the independence movement, making it a centre for nationalist activities, including arms supply; the Japanese attacked it on 4 April 1920, leaving hundreds dead. By 1923, the Korean population in the Soviet Union had grown to 106,817. The following year, the Soviets began taking measures to control Korean population movement to their territory; however, they were not completely successful until 1931; after that date, they halted all migration from Korea and required existing migrants to naturalise as Soviet citizens.
The Soviet policy of korenizatsiya (indigenisation) resulted in the creation of 105 Korean village soviets (councils) in mixed-nationality raion, as well as an entire raion for the Korean nationality, the Pos'et Korean National Raion; these conducted their activities entirely in the Korean language. The Soviet Koreans had a large number of their own official institutions, including 380 Korean schools, two teachers' colleges, one pedagogical school, three hospitals, a theatre, six journals, and seven newspapers (the largest of which, Vanguard, had a circulation of 10,000). The 1937 Census showed 168,259 Koreans in the Soviet Union. However, officials in the Russian Far East viewed the Koreans' ethnic and family ties to the Japanese Empire with suspicion, which would soon set the stage for the deportation of the whole population.
Deportation to Central Asia
In 1937, facing reports from the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) that there were possibilities that Japanese could have infiltrated the Russian Far East by means of ethnic Korean spies, Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov signed Resolution 1428-326 ss, "On the Exile of the Korean Population from border Raions of the Far East Kray", on 21 August. According to the report of Nikolai Yezhov, 36,442 Korean families totalling 171,781 persons were deported by 25 October. The deported Koreans faced difficult conditions in Central Asia: monetary assistance promised by the government never materialised, and furthermore, most of the deported were rice farmers and fishermen, who had difficulty adapting to the arid climate of their new home. Estimates based on population statistics suggest that 40,000 deported Koreans died in 1937 and 1938 for these reasons. Nonetheless, the deportees cooperated to build irrigation works and start rice farms; within three years, they had recovered their original standard of living.
The events of this period led to the formation of a cohesive identity among the Korean deportees. However, in schools for Soviet Korean children, the government switched Korean language from being the medium of instruction to being taught merely as a second language in 1939, and from 1945 stopped it from being taught entirely; furthermore, the only publication in the Korean language was the Lenin Kichi (now called Koryo Ilbo). As a result, subsequent generations lost the use of the Korean language, which J. Otto Pohl described as "emasculat[ing] the expression of Korean culture in the Soviet Union. Up until the era of glasnost, it was not permitted to speak openly of the deportations.
Liberation and division of Korea During the Soviet-Japanese War, Koryo-saram Chŏng Sangjin was the only ethnic Korean who had a combat role on the Soviet side. He notably participated in the Seishin Operation. Chŏng and a number of other Koryo-saram joined North Korea after the division of Korea. Some Koryo-saram, including Pak Chang-ok, became key figures in that government, where they formed a faction of Soviet Koreans. However, in the mid-1950s, Kim Il Sung purged many Soviet-aligned Korean people, which led to the expulsion of a number of Koryo-saram from the North. Several of them, including Chŏng, returned to Central Asia and continued writing for the Lenin Kichi.
Following the establishment of Sakhalin Oblast, Koryo-saram would be sent to Sakhalin to establish Korean-language schools in order to educate the island's Korean population, with 2,000 residing on Sakhalin by 1959. These Korean language schools would be closed in 1963 and supplanted by Russian language ones.
2021 status Scholars estimated the 2021 census that roughly 175,000 Koryo-saram were living in Russia.
Russia
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.
Russian Federation 148,556 153,156 87,819 Number by federal districts Central Federal District 16,720 21,779 12,194 Northwestern Federal District 6,903 7,000 4,054 Southern Federal District 39,031 40,191 27,065 Volga Federal District 9,088 12,215 7,455 Ural Federal District 4,071 3,805 2,112 Siberian Federal District 10,797 11,193 5,084 Far Eastern Federal District 61,946 56,973 29,855
Ukraine
In the Ukrainian 2001 census, 12,711 people defined themselves as ethnic Koreans, up from 8,669 in 1989. Of these only 17.5% gave Korean as their native language. The majority (76%) named Russian as their native language, while 5.5% named Ukrainian. The largest concentrations can be found in Kharkiv, Kyiv, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Cherkasy, Lviv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea. The largest ethnic representative body, the Association of Koreans in Ukraine, is located in Kharkiv, where roughly 150 Korean families reside; the first Korean language school was opened in 1996 under their direction. Some of the most famous Korean-Ukrainians are Vitalii Kim, current governor of Mykolaiv Oblast, Pavlo Lee, actor killed in Russo-Ukrainian war, and Oleksandr Sin, former mayor of Zaporizhzhia.
Central Asia