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Whenever demographic policy of the Primorye region is discussed, the issue of migration immediately comes to attention. During a recent seminar in the town of Arseniev, the discussion took a sudden turn and focused on the touchy issue of the return of ethnic Koreans to Primorye from where they had been forcedly deported in 1937 under Joseph Stalin’s regime.

On August 21, 1937 the Soviet authorities signed a decree ordering the deportation of the Korean population from the border territories of the Far Eastern district. The motive was “to combat penetration of Japanese espionage into the Far East of the Soviet Union.” 172,000 Koreans were deported to the central part of Russia under the decree.

Some 36,442 families were put into cargo trains and transported to Kazakhstan for resettlement. Many of them counted on promised aid and compensations but in fact nobody waited for Koreans there and the settling down stretched on for years.

Until 1945, the Koreans’ status was better than that of other repressed populations. They did not have to weekly appear at the special commandant’s offices for registration, having the opportunity to move across Central Asia and with special permission even outside the territory. However, they were prohibited from enrolling in the Soviet Army having only the opportunity to work in the ‘labor army’. Still, unlike the Germans or the Tatars, the Koreans could enroll in universities and institutes and take important positions.

After Joseph Stalin’s death, all restrictions were cancelled. In the 1950s, the Koreans could leave Central Asia, study in the Soviet universities and even received an opportunity to return to the Far East.

The Koreans started to return to Primorye, though in small numbers, in the 1960s as engineers, teachers, doctors, scientists, after receiving educations in Moscow and St. Petersburg’s universities.

However, only in 1993, the Upper Council of Russia issued a special ruling calling the deportation of the Koreans ‘illegal” and admitting the fact it was part of the political repressions of Stalin’s regime.

Soon after, the official representatives of South Korea started to visit ethnic Koreans in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan urging them to move back to Primorye. In 1998 the Primorye region administration allotted 2,000 hectares of land in the Mikhailovsky County to create a Korean settlement.



It was planned to construct about 100 houses in Primorye’s Korean village called “Druzhba”, or Friendship. By September of 2001, 30 houses were constructed and given to families. After this, the positive tendency came to a halt. The funds planned for the return of other Korean families to Primorye seem to disappear before they manage to reach the migrating people.

Presently, construction of new housing in the villages continues slowly and is carried out by the residents themselves. The question remains: if the South Korean government is interested in keeping a Korean settlement in the Russian Far East, then why does it not seem to care much about its development?

Anton Lepnitsky is an expert for Fund of Effective Regional Politics, based in Moscow.