Russian Embass remembers Lyudmila Nam

By Kim Se-jeong

The Russian Embassy in Seoul last week commemorated the life of Lyudmila Nam, a Russian mezzo-soprano and a third-generation Koryo-saram, descendants of Korean immigrants to Central Asia in the early 20th century.

Nam was born in Kazakhstan in 1947, and passed away in 2007 at 60.

Lee Yeon-seong, a bass and her former student, led the sixth annual commemorative concert featuring the KAROS Percussion Ensemble at the Russian Embassy on April 4. Russian Ambassador Konstantin V. Vnukov, Kazakh Ambassador Dulat Bakishev and designer Lie Sang-bong were among the guests.

Nam’s career was at its peak between 1977 and 1997 when she was a solo performer at the Bolshoi Theater. A trip to Korea in 1988 during the Seoul Olympic Games put her on the map in Korea, and opened new doors for her.

In 1990, she came back to sing in the opera “Carmen” in Seoul, followed by a tour across Korea in 1994. In 1997, she accepted an offer to teach at a university in Daegu. In 2000 and 2003, she received national honors from Korea and Russia, respectively.

One of Nam’s contributions was to shed light on the history of Soviet Koreans, descendants of Korean immigrants to the Russian Far East, who were deported to Central Asia in the late 1930s.