In general, Russian Koreans, the so-called koryo saram, are confined to Russia and former Soviet Republics. After the fall of the Soviet Union, some did manage to get out. Probably the largest number were the ones invited by the Republic of South Korea to come and resettle in their ancestral land. Many from the former Soviet Central Asia accepted the invitation, but also many did not like life in South Korea and returned to their former homes. It is my understanding that those that chose to remain in Korea tend to stick with each other and are discriminated against by South Koreans because of their poor Korean language skills and totally un-Korean manners and behavior.
The uhl mao zeh, on the other hand, being very small in numbers to start with, had very few get out of China, Manchuria region. Some did end up in North Korea, but vast majority were shipped off to Soviet Central Asia to join the koryo saram, and eventually became koryo saram themselves. A tiny number of uhl mao zeh did get out from under communist rule, but they sort of melted into whatever society that they chose or ended up living in by choice or necessity. In that way, they disappeared as uhl mao zeh. Those that got out, usually managed to do quite well for themselves, mainly because of their linguistic abilities and their ability to blend in! One such individual uhl mao zeh was Oleg Chegai, someone I met for the first time when I was in the U.S. Army in the early 1960s.
The name Chegai is a peculiar Cyrillization of the Korean name Che. For some reason, some Korean names like Ko or Che were modified to read Ko-gai or Che-gai. No one seems to know exactly why the "gai" suffix was added, but it was always a dead give away that the person was a Russian Korean!
I was still in the Special Forces Training Group, receiving my training to become a Special Forces soldier when I ran into an E-7 Sergeant First Class by the name of Oleg Chegai. Chegai was about six feet tall, a good looking individual who appeared to be in his thirties, not easily recognizable as a person of Korean ancestry. But I knew that the name Chegai was Russian Korean so, despite my lowly rank and position as a PFC and a trainee, I approached him during a break and struck up a conversation with him. I spoke to him in Russian and he seemed a bit taken aback at first. But then, looking at my name tag, he immediately said, "you're uhl mao zeh, aren't you?" I told him I was, and we talked some more before class resumed. We had many conversations after that, and eventually he invited me to his house for dinner.
Oleg lived in an area outside of Fort Bragg called Southern Pines. It was a modest house, what you would expect an NCO to live in. His wife was a charming and a very attractive southern girl from the area. Apparently the two met in a class that they were both taking in the evening at the local college. Oleg was trying to get a college degree while he was working in the Training Group which guaranteed that he would not be deployed for the duration of his assignment. Liz, his wife was taking a class to fulfill requirements for a North Carolina Teaching Credentials. They had been married less than a year at the time and Liz had just gotten a job teaching at a local junior high. She was a very friendly and chatty person, very excited about her new job.
During the course of the evening Oleg and I often switched to Russian, and Liz seemed
completely unfazed by our Russian conversation, although she did not speak Russian herself. Then at one point she said that she would like to learn to speak "Hawaiian" one of these days! Both Oleg and I were taken completely by surprise at her remark. When she noticed our surprised expressions, she said,
"Well, you are speaking Hawaiian, aren't you?"
Oleg shook his head at that and said no, that we were speaking Russian. Now it was her turn to be surprised. Her eyes widened and she turned to Oleg.
"I thought you were speaking Hawaiian because you are Hawaiian, aren't you?"
Again, Oleg shook his head and said, no, he was not a Hawaiian.
That was a very amusing incident and I would have loved to have heard Oleg's explanation to Liz on why he spoke Russian and his racial/ethnic identity!
According to Oleg, his father was an uhl mao zeh from Vladivostok who came to Harbin shortly before the Bolshevik Revolution with his elderly parents. His father was a doctor and worked for the railroad company that was headquartered in Harbin. In Harbin his father met and married a beautiful Russian concert pianist and the two had their first and only child, Oleg, in 1930. A few years after Oleg was born, the Japanese essentially annexed Manchuria in 1931 and created the State of Manchukuo. Oleg's parents did not like living under Japanese rule, so they decided to move to Shanghai.
Since Oleg's father received his medical training in France, he settled in the French Concession of Shanghai and had a successful practice. Oleg attended French schools and became fluent in French. Oleg grew up speaking Russian at home, French at school, and Korean with his grandmother who came with them to Shanghai. The grandfather died before Oleg was born. The school he attended was French, but English was also taught at that school so Oleg learned English as well. After he graduated from the French school at 17, he enrolled in an International College where English was the main language. At the same time, he picked up Chinese from servants and on the streets!
When Mao's communist forces began advancing on Shanghai in 1949, Oleg's parents managed to get visas to Australia for the three of them and booked passage. Oleg's grandmother had died when Oleg was 14. However, the port of Shanghai was in complete chaos as people jostled and crowded trying to get on any boat leaving the city. Somehow during all the confusion, Oleg became separated from his parents and ended up boarding the wrong boat. So, while his parents sailed off for Australia, Oleg didn't even know where his boat was going, although he could guess by the fact that vast majority of passengers were Korean!
Oleg's boat docked at Inchon after a rough voyage. He made his way to Seoul and immediately sought out the Australian Embassy, but there was no Australian Embassy in Seoul at the time. There was only the British Embassy that apparently had an Australian interest section. Oleg went there and explained his predicament. But he was told nothing could be done, that since his father had all the papers, he had no proof of his claim. He asked that they contact Australia to get hold of his parents, but was told that was impossible with all the chaos and all the refugees and what not. So, Oleg was stuck in Korea. But because of his linguistic abilities, he managed to get a decent job working for the local UN office. But then everything turned upside down again when on June 25, 1950, North Korean troops invaded South Korea. After a few days, Oleg evacuated south to Pusan with the rest of the UN staff.
He worked for UN in Pusan, but his linguistic abilities were noticed by others and he was offered a job by the U.S. Army's G-2 Section. It was actually the fledging CIA which was called euphemistically as the Army's G-2. He was hired by a unit that was called Joint Advisory Commission Korea (JACK). JACK, a CIA operation, was headed by an Army Major with considerable experience in special operations, a Major Jack Singlaub. Singlaub was a veteran of OSS in World War Two and was one of the founders of CIA in 1947. Singlaub noticed the young man with an odd name, Chegai. Having spent time with OSS in Manchuria during and shortly after World War Two, Singlaub knew of uhl mao zeh and immediately guessed that Oleg was an uhl mao zeh. Learning of his multilingual abilities, Singlaub lured Oleg away from UN and put him to work with special operations that he ran.
Oleg worked in various capacities, but mostly as a guerrilla fighter with the United Nations Partisan Force in Korea, the UNPFK. He worked as a trainer as well as a patrol leader and went on many combat missions. His ability to speak both Korean and Chinese allowed him to work in training both Korean and Chinese agents that were recruited for secret infiltration into North Korea and Manchuria, and also to train Korean troops for the UNPFK. All his American bosses were very impressed with him, so much so that they somehow managed to get him into the U.S. Army under the new Lodge Act.
The Lodge Act was created in 1950 primarily to recruit Eastern European volunteers for the U.S. Army. There was an acute shortage of native speakers of Eastern European languages as well as Russian in the U.S. Army. The Lodge Act allowed the Army to recruit likely candidates for enlistment period of five years, after which the person was eligible for U.S. citizenship. Although the Lodge Act was designed to recruit Eastern European candidates, it did not specify ethnic origin, the recruitment was more based on linguistic ability. Oleg's sponsors managed to sneak him in to the U.S. Army under the Lodge Act. There were apparently another handful of uhl mao zeh that got into the U.S. Army under the Lodge Act. There weren't a lot of Lodge Act recruits, only a couple of hundred, and most went to the 10th Special Forces Group in Germany. So, Oleg was accepted into the U.S. Army under the Lodge Act in 1953, sent for training to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, after which he was shipped off to Germany to the 10th Special Forces Group. Because of his extensive combat experience in Korea and the rank of lieutenant that he held in UNPFK, he was given the rank of a Sergeant E-5 in the U.S. Army.
After I left the Training Group I lost touch with Oleg Chegai. Special Forces was a very small outfit at the time so I would hear from time to time that Oleg was here or there, promoted to Master Sergeant, etc. Then in 1966 while in Vietnam, he reunited with his old mentor, now Colonel Jack Singlaub who was in charge of the secret outfit known as Military Advisory Command Vietnam, Studies and Observation Group (MACVSOG). SOG was initially called Special Operations Group, but the name was changed to make it sound more innocuous. Oleg had been assigned to SOG and had gone on a number of very dangerous recon missions. Singlaub recommended Oleg for a battlefield commission so, General Westmoreland, who was the overall commander at the time, awarded a battlefield commission to Oleg Chegai to first lieutenant, skipping the second lieutenant grade. Another Special Forces Sergeant, Dick Meadows, was earlier given a battlefield commission to Captain by Westmoreland!
Several years later, I ran into Oleg Chegai at Travis Air Force Base. I had gone to Travis to see a good friend going off to Vietnam, it was in 1970, and ran into Oleg Chegai who was a Captain and going back to Vietnam again. He said he was going to try to stay in the States after this tour, his fourth, and finish his Master's Degree in History. He said he was very close to finishing his MA. He and Liz had no children and she was a Vice Principal at the same junior high school where she got her first teaching job. That was the last time I saw Oleg Chegai. Oleg never got to finish his MA, I heard that he was killed on that final tour.
The first draft of my book The Manchurian Tales had a chapter that was about Oleg Chegai. However, during one of my editing frenzies, I decided to leave out that chapter as well as several others that I might rewrite as blogs in the future.
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