Sakhalin Koreans

The Korean diaspora of Sakhalin began its gradual formation after 1870. In 1890, the presence of Koreans on Sakhalin was mentioned by A.P. Chekhov , who visited the island, who conducted a personal census and wrote in the book “Sakhalin Island” that “Semenov has manes , Koreans and Russians ^[4] . A census of 1897 found 67 Koreans out of 28,000 inhabitants on the island. It should be noted that from 1905 to 1937 in the northern (Russian, and then Soviet) part of Sakhalin, a North-Sakhalin group of Koreans was formed separately, which, like the continental kore-saras , in the amount of 1187 people were deported to Central Asia ^[4] .

The approximate location of Japanese massacres of Koreans in Karafuto
1: Sikuka (Poronaysk), near Kamisikuka (上 敷 香)
2: Maoka , near the village of Mizuho (Pozharskoe) (瑞 穂 村)
     the USSR      Japan empire

According to the results of the Russo-Japanese War, the southern part of Sakhalin Island (south of the fiftieth parallel according to the peace treaty of 1905 ) belonged to Japan and was called Karafuto Prefecture . After the annexation of Korea, the Japanese government mobilized Korean workers and sent them to South Sakhalin to replenish the workforce, which was lacking due to the mass militarization of the country and the draft of the Japanese and partially Korean population in the Imperial Army on the eve of and during the Second World War . The total mobilization of Koreans to work on Karafuto began in 1939 and was carried out in three stages:

Stage 1. Recruitment (September 1939 - February 1942).

2 stage. The state organized recruitment (February 1942 - September 1944) was carried out by force or by fraud.

3 stage. The labor service (September 1944 - August 1945) was in the form of a "hunt for Koreans."

In total, over 70,000 Koreans from then-Japanese Korea were brought to Sakhalin during the existence of Karafuto for forced labor, mainly in coal mines. Koreans also laid railroads, worked at logging. Some of them retired and were able to return home before Karafuto left the jurisdiction of Japan. Some Koreans came to Sakhalin voluntarily in search of higher earnings, since in 1943 Karafuto was proclaimed part of Japan itself and salaries on the island were significantly higher than in Korea, which had the status of a colony ^[3] . Moreover, almost all of them came from regions that subsequently became part of South Korea. Between 1939 and 1945, about 40 thousand Koreans ^[5] were imported by Japanese authorities to Sakhalin to prepare the island’s infrastructure for war. By the end of the war, 47 thousand people of Korean nationality remained on Sakhalin ^[6] .

The Soviet army occupied southern Sakhalin a few days before the surrender of Japan . On September 2, 1945, more than 391 thousand people lived in southern Sakhalin, of which 358.5 thousand were Japanese , approx. 23.5 thousand officially registered Koreans (in fact, their number was twice as many, since several thousand Koreans were brought by the Japanese authorities to forced labor on the island in the very last months of World War II), and more than 1 thousand people of the indigenous population . Having become furious over the defeats of the Japanese army, groups of Japanese civilians began to vent their anger and indignation on the defenseless Koreans. August 18, 1945 there was a shooting in Kamisikuk . August 22, 1945 there was a bloody massacre in Mizuho ^[7] . In the fall of 1946, an agreement was reached between the USSR and the USA on the repatriation of the Japanese population . 50 Koreans living on the islands of the Lesser Kuril Ridge were relocated to Sakhalin to avoid direct illegal deportation from the Kuril Islands to Japan along with the Kuril Japanese. ^[8] A small part of Sakhalin Koreans was able to obtain Japanese citizenship until 1945 as a result of intermarriage with the Japanese, and therefore was deported to Japan ^[9] . A small number of Koreans were deported to Japan by mistake ^[10] . Until 1956, Japan refused to accept any persons of Korean nationality regardless of citizenship. Due to the strong discrimination of Koreans in Japan, some people from Korean-Japanese marriages decided to stay in the USSR. After signing the Moscow Declaration, Japan agreed to accept them. As a result, in the years 1957-1959, 2,300 people in mixed Korean-Japanese marriages moved to Japan, including 604 Japanese, 456 Koreans, and 1,240 children from mixed marriages ^[11] .

After signing the act of unconditional surrender, Japan could not independently conduct foreign policy. The repatriation took place in 2 stages, at the first stage from October 1946 to May 1948, 357 thousand Japanese left the island. The second stage of 1957-1960. - approx. 2 thousand Japanese citizens. According to the agreements, only citizens of Japan were subject to repatriation due to the American occupation regime established in Japan and South Korea. (The territory of Korea withdrew from Japan, all Koreans lost their Japanese citizenship). After the war ended, the capitulating Japanese government announced that after the departure of the Japanese, the evacuation of the Koreans would begin. However, Korea fell out of Japanese control. As a result, the Unsen Maru evacuation ship, which took the last Japanese Karafuto in June 1949, never returned to Sakhalin again.

Ultimately, however, the USSR was interested in preserving part of the human resources of the abolished Karafuto , since it was the remaining Koreans who could somehow support the infrastructure of the mining villages and barracks of the south of the island. In 1946 , the Government of the USSR allowed the remaining Koreans to start registering at the place of residence, Korean national schools began to open, newspapers appeared in Korean ^[3] . At the end of 1952, the DPRK Consul was allowed to start campaigning for Sakhalin Koreans to accept North Korean citizenship, although for most the South Korean counties were native. At the same time, the Soviet administrative authorities allowed the willing Koreans to apply for USSR citizenship . At the first stage, more than half of Sakhalin Koreans accepted DPRK citizenship. So, according to the Department of Internal Affairs in the early 60s, out of 43 thousand Sakhalin Koreans, 25 thousand passed to DPRK citizenship, 13 thousand received Soviet citizenship, 4,500 remained stateless ^[6] . Until 1958, Soviet authorities encouraged the transfer of Sakhalin Koreans to USSR citizenship. Then, making concessions to Pyongyang , who wanted to persuade the South Korean elements to their side, the Soviet authorities sharply limited this opportunity and created numerous bureaucratic obstacles. Meanwhile, Sakhalin Koreans who left for the DPRK were dissatisfied with life in North Korea for political and economic reasons. At the request of North Korean officials, the Soviet teams transporting migrants "were equipped with firearms" to prevent provocations (so that the Koreans would not seize the ship and force the team to take them to South Korea or Japan). Moreover, ships with repatriates accompanied Soviet warships ^[9] . By the beginning of the 70s, the USSR itself began to diverge in its more liberal views with the DPRK. As a result, Sakhalin Koreans left without Soviet citizenship again got the opportunity to acquire it. As a result, the DPRK was not able to form a second Cheonren on Sakhalin, a powerful pro-Pyongyang association of Japanese Koreans. In 1985, the Japanese government agreed to finance the repatriation of Sakhalin Koreans of the first generation, born before August 15, 1945 ^[12] , as well as the second (born after August 15, 1945), married to the older generation ^[13] . In 1985 , according to the Department of Internal Affairs, the Korean population of Sakhalin Oblast was 31,664 people. Of these, 20 522 had Soviet citizenship, 1259 were citizens of the DPRK, and 9883 were stateless. The Sakhalin diaspora also continues to insist that the Japanese government return to them the savings and voluntary insurance, together with interest on them in the amount of 180 million yen, which their ancestors were forced to transfer to the accounts of Japanese banks in the 1930s and 1940s, and which are still placed in the bank of Otaru ^[14] .

In the first years after the accession of South Sakhalin, the Soviet authorities sought to actively support local Koreans in their native language education , provided they were Sovietized. Since 1948, the Korean Mobile Theater worked, staging revolutionary and Soviet plays ^[15] . Also in the post-war period, newspapers appeared in the Korean language, it taught in schools, and a Korean department functioned at the South Sakhalin Pedagogical School ^[15] . But in the early 1960s, politics changed. In 1963, the Korean theater was closed, the publication of almost all Korean newspapers was curtailed except the weekly “ On the Leninist Way ”, and 32 Korean schools with 7,239 students switched to Russian ^[15] .

Currently, Sakhalin Koreans are almost completely Russified. During the 2010 census, of the 24,865 Koreans in the Sakhalin Oblast who indicated language proficiency, only 6,169 Koreans declared proficiency in Korean, while 24,752 Koreans declared proficiency in Russian ^[16] .

According to unofficial polls, about 15 thousand Sakhalin Koreans - almost half of those living on the island - expressed their desire to move to South Korea in 1993. However, no more than 4 thousand Koreans left the island. Mostly elderly people who were born in Korea wished to repatriate, to whom the authorities of the latter promised to provide housing, medical insurance and a small pension. In 1993, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, South Korean agencies appealed to the authorities of the Sakhalin Region with a request to conduct an official opinion poll among Sakhalin Koreans, but this proposal initially provoked an objection from both the local authorities and the Russian Foreign Ministry. A joint survey was organized only in the spring of 1997 by the joint efforts of the Sakhalin Oblast Statistical Office and several South Korean representatives. However, the results of the study were never officially published. As before, the South Korean side was interested in how many Sakhalin Koreans want to move to the Republic of Korea for permanent residence. Judging by leaks in the media, less than 5 thousand Koreans expressed such a desire, that is, almost three times less than in the early 90s ^[14] . Due to the fact that the majority of modern Sakhalin Koreans are natives of the island and do not seek to leave it, more relevant for them is the simplification of conditions for trips to South Korea for cultural and economic exchange and maintaining ties with relatives. By 2002, more than 12,000 Koreans from more than 30,000 islands had already visited South Korea at least once.

The number of Koreans on the island reached 30,000 (5% of the island's population), including about 15,000 in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk . Unlike the continental Korean diaspora in Russia and the CIS countries, Sakhalin Koreans compactly live in southern Sakhalin. Most noticeable is their presence in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk . It is also worth noting that during the 2010 census, many ethnic Koreans, like other residents of the region, did not indicate their nationality . In conditions of freedom of movement, population migration to other regions of Russia and foreign countries makes the problem of the existence of the Sakhalin Koreans diaspora urgent. The geography of the settlement of Sakhalin Koreans is quite extensive: the Sakhalin region, Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities of the Russian Federation, in addition, Sakhalin Koreans are present in the CIS countries, South Korea, Japan, the USA, Canada, Australia, Austria, Germany, etc. d.

In the late 1990s, three countries — Russia, the Republic of Korea, and Japan — began a campaign to repatriate the first generation of Sakhalin Koreans (born before August 15, 1945) to their historical homeland. The mass repatriation of Sakhalin Koreans to the Republic of Korea began in 2000. Now, about 3,500 immigrants from Russia live in South Korea. Repatriation is carried out at the expense of the Red Cross of Japan and the Republic of Korea. Under the program, the Korean government provides repatriates with housing, pays monthly social benefits, and provides health insurance services. The Japanese government, in turn, acquires property (one or two-bedroom apartments of up to 40 m²) and pays for transportation costs. In addition, once every two years, Sakhalin Koreans who moved to their homeland, at the expense of the Japanese government, have the right to visit Sakhalin free of charge ^[5] . Most Sakhalin Koreans settled in the city of Ansan , where 500 apartments were built specifically for them ^[5] . The program for repatriation of representatives of the first generation according to the plan should have been completed by the end of 2013 , then the duration of the program was extended by Japanese and South Korean authorities until the end of 2015 . For every 50 elderly returnees, there are 2-3 returnees to Sakhalin ^[17] .

Due to the relatively recent forced relocation, Sakhalin Koreans do not identify with Koryo-saram , a term used to refer to all continental Koreans of the former USSR . Unlike the Sakhalin, “continental” Koreans lived in the modern Primorsky Territory long before the Russian colonization of the Far Eastern region or voluntarily moved to the Russian Empire in the 60s. XIX century from all, but mainly the northern regions of Korea. During the period of Stalin's political repressions in 1937, the continental Koreans were deported by the regime to Central Asia as "unreliable", since Korea was part of the Japanese Empire. Despite the differences in language and origin, in the years after the war, the life and life of all Koreans of the post-Soviet space acquired common features.

• М. Г. Булавинцева. Сахалин-Карафуто: история границы сквозь ценность образования. Япония наших дней. № 3(5), 2010.- М.: ИДВ РАН, 2010—164 с. — С.89-98