I began these blogs back in March of 2014 with a blog on Russian Koreans which was followed quickly with Russian Koreans II. The reason was very simple. I started these blogs for the purpose of promoting my book The Manchurian Tales which is about the triumphs and tragedies experienced by a Russian Korean family. I felt that perhaps readers needed more explanation as to who were Russian Koreans, in the case of my book, the uhl mao zeh, and how they came about.
Periodically I would add some more information about Russian Koreans while blogging on other topics and material. Eventually I drifted off into other topics when I changed the title of these blogs to Manchurian Tales and Snap Shots. I was tempted to add to that and everything else! However, I held off on lengthening the title, although if you have been following my blogs, I have written on just about everything you can think of!
Very recently I was contacted by a young scholar who is doing research on Russian Koreans. She is travelling to all the areas where Russian Koreans are known to live or in some cases, have lived. She visited Harbin but made no contact with any Russian Koreans and said that very little remained of Russian architecture and culture. The city of Harbin, in her words, was now almost completely Chinese. This morning she sent me an email from Sakhalin where she was interviewing some Koreans, descendants of those who were brought over by Japanese in the 1930s as slave laborers. These Koreans are considered to be a distinct group and are referred to as Sakhalin Koreans, not koryo saram, which is the name given to Russian Koreans everywhere else.
The reason she contacted me was because she had read my book The Manchurian Tales and was interested in finding out more about the uhl mao zeh, the Russian Koreans who lived in Manchuria. Keep in mind that Manchuria has always had and still has a significant Korean population, but these are not uhl mao zeh, the Russian Koreans. The Russian Koreans came to Manchuria from the Russian Far East to escape the communists that were taking over the country after the revolution. They were generally of better socio economic level, better educated, and Russofied. Being in Manchuria, a Chinese administered area at the time, they took on the Chinese name for people such as themselves, uhl mao zeh, a Korean pronunciation of the Chinese er mao tzu, which literally means a second foreigner (using the more polite translation!).
The young scholar said that she was not aware of the existence of this group of Russian Koreans until she read my book and wanted to learn more. She said she had never encountered any mention of uhl mao zeh in either English language or Korean language research that she had read. Generally speaking, she found in her research that all Russian Koreans were lumped into one group. The only distinction made was to separate the Sakhalin Koreans from the rest of Russian Koreans known as koryo saram. I sympathized with her, for I too was unable to find any written material on the Russian Koreans from Manchuria, the uhl mao zeh. Their numbers were small, but they should be considered a separate group, although most of them were rounded up by the Soviets and packed off to Central Asia to join other Russian Koreans. Still in all, they were a separate group that received Western education in contrast to their relatives in Central Asia who could only receive Soviet education.
According to Russian census reports, there are about 470,000 Russian Koreans in Russia and other former Soviet Republics. I believe those figures are incorrect. The Russian census takers considered only those households where Korean was the main language spoken! If Russian was the main language, then they were no longer listed as being Korean. This is very typical of Russians and their approach and treatment of minorities. I have mentioned this particular Russian quirk in The Manchurian Tales. Essentially, if you took on a Russian first name, spoke Russian, and especially if you became a Russian Orthodox, then you were a Russian. Russians are peculiar in that regard and have been this way for ages. As I mentioned in The Manchurian Tales, Koreans readily accepted the Orthodox faith and took Russian names, therefore, they were quickly accepted by Russians, more so than other ethnic groups that resisted assimilation.
Those groups that clung to their native faith and spoke their own language were indeed discriminated against and were not accepted. Nothing has changed. Just listen to Putin talking about Muslims and other "foreigners" in Russia. To paraphrase him, he says something to the effect that, "if you accept our way of life, our language, our beliefs, then you are welcome. If you choose to stick to your way of life, then Russia is not the place for you!" He is not exaggerating, that is the Russian attitude and has been for centuries. That is also why ethnic minorities could rise to high positions, regardless of their race, if they embraced Russian way of life and were "Russofied."
It is the Koreans' willingness to accept the "Russian way" that allowed them to succeed in Russia, whether it was Tsarist, Soviet, or current Russia. That is why Russians insist on calling them Russian Koreans, Russian first, Korean second, with no hyphen. If they are not Russofied, then they are simply Koreans even if they hold a Russian passport.
The United States has something in the area of 1.7 million residents of Korean ancestry. They are, of course, first, second, and third, possibly even fourth and fifth generation Korean-Americans. The population of the United States is currently around 319 million, a bit larger than Soviet Union's population at the last count of 293 million and larger than current Russian population of around 143 million. If the figure of 470,000 is accurate, then the ethnic Korean population is but a drop in the bucket and significantly less than here in the U.S. The U.S., incidentally, has the largest Korean population outside of Korea itself. But I don't believe the 470,000 is an accurate figure. As I stated, Russian census taking is somewhat cock-eyed in that if Korean is not spoken in the household, then those living in that household are not considered Korean. That, as I said, is a peculiar Russian trait in separating or accepting different ethnic minorities. If you embrace Russian way of life and speak Russian, then you are considered Russian. If not, in the words of Putin, "find some place else to live, there's no place for you in Russia."
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