Deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union

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From September to October of 1937, the Soviet authorities deported tens of thousands of persons of Korean origins from the Russian Far East to Soviet Central Asia. More than 172,000 Koreans were deported from the border regions of the Russian Far East as part of Joseph Stalin's policy of systematic population transfer. Its legal basis was the joint decree #1428-326сс of the USSR Sovnarkom and VKP(b) Central Committee of August 21, 1937, "About Deportation of the Korean Population from the Border Regions of the Far Eastern Krai" ("О выселении корейского населения из пограничных районов Дальневосточного края"), undersigned by Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov. The justification was "to suppress the penetration of the Japanese espionage into the Far Eastern Krai". For the implementation of the decision, Genrikh Lyushkov was transferred from Rostov and assigned chief of the Far Eastern Krai NKVD. Soviet Koreans were resettled to Kazakh SSR and Uzbek SSR (in the latter case including Karakalpak ASSR).

[edit] History

The deportation was preceded by a typical Soviet scenario of political repression: falsified trials of local party leaders accused of insurrection, accusations of plans of the secession of the Far Eastern Krai, local party purges, and articles in Pravda about the Japanese espionage in the Far East.

The deportation was executed by NKVD Troikas of several levels — oblast troikas, raion troikas, and "group" troikas (кустовая тройка) — under strict monitoring of deadlines. Hundreds of party functionaries were purged and repressed for failures in this operation.

The deportation was performed in three batches, graded by the remoteness to the border; the first was the Posyet raion and "raions adjacent to Grodekovo". The deportees were transported by railway trains of about 50 carriages each, with 25-30 people per carriage. Travel to the destination took between 30 and 40 days.

Nikolai Yezhov reported the completion of the deportation of Koreans from Far Eastern Krai on October 25, 1937. In total, 36,442 families counting 171,781 persons were reported to be resettled. The Koreans remaining in Sakhalin, fishermen in the sea, and those on business trips were to be deported in an additional train by November 1.^[1]

[edit] References

The White Book about Deportations of Korean Population in Russia in 30-40s (Белая книга о депортации корейского населения России в 30-40-х годах) Moscow, 1992 (vol. 1), 1997 (vol. 2), compiled by Li U He (V. F. Li, Ли У Хэ) and Kim Yeon Un (Ким Ён Ун, the name is often transliterated as "Kim Yen Un" from the Russian variant "Ким Ен Ун").