Koreans in Sakhalin Caught Amid Russia-Japan Rivalry
This is the first in a series of articles highlighting the lives of Koreans on Sakhalin Island.
By Andrei Lankov
Korea Times Columnist
SAKHALIN ― In spring 1946, hundreds of Korean miners and fishers came to a small port city of Korsakov, located in the southernmost part of the Sakhalin island.
Southern Sakhalin just changed ownership. After 40 years of the Japanese rule, its territory was retaken by the Russians, so local Japanese were moving back to their native islands.
Koreans came to Korsakov because rumors were circulating that ships would soon arrive to take all Koreans back home, to southern provinces of Korea. Those who came to Korsakov wanted to be first to board these ships. But ships never came.
This was, in a sense, a sign of things to come. The Koreans found themselves locked on the island in 1945, much against their will, and for a long time they hoped for some miracle which would let them return to their homes. This miracle materialized, but only after it was too late for most of them.
Sakhalin Koreans were not migrants in a strict sense. It was the land which changed ownership, so its inhabitants found themselves in a new country which they could not leave at their will. When the Soviet Union took over the area, it expelled nearly all Japanese, but forced Koreans to stay. At first, Sakhalin Koreans were slaves of the Japanese empire, and then they became hostages of Cold War politics.
In 1905, Sakhalin was divided between Russia and Japan with the Japanese occupying the southern half.
The island had large coal deposits and abundant fisheries as well as large forests. However, developmental projects needed cheap labor, and this was easily found in Korea, then a Japanese colony.
From the 1930s, the Koreans began to arrive on the island. At first, they came voluntarily, attracted by high wages. Indeed, a Sakhalin coal miner could make 80-100 yen a month ― a fortune for a Korean countryside lad who would be happy to get 20 yen a month back home. Initially, these salaries were indeed paid, but when the military situation began to deteriorate, the payments were greatly reduced. Even until today, descendants of those miners are engaged in a legal battle with the Japanese companies and banks, trying to recover this money.
In the early 1940s, the Koreans began to arrive on the island as a mobilized workforce. Usually, they were also put in the mines, where they had to work under increasingly dangerous conditions, producing coal for the empire.
By 1945, there were some 24,000 Koreans on the island. The population of Karafuto was 380,000, meaning Koreans constituted around 6 percent of the total ― a ratio which, incidentally, has not changed much until the present day.
A vast majority of these people came from what was to become South Korea, and few of them intended to stay on the island for more than a few years.
In those days, many Japanese people looked at Koreans with racist disdain and a great deal of suspicion. It was widely believed that Koreans tended to have communist sympathies and might even be secretly siding with the Russians.
Ironically, Soviet Russia was also suspicious of Koreans being potential Japanese sympathizers. The forced relocation of all ethnic Koreans from the Far East in 1937 was largely caused by the authorities' worries about their loyalties in the likely case of war with Japan.
When the USSR finally joined the war in August 1945, these suspicions ― and the hatred ― led to violence. In mid-August 1945, the local Koreans were attacked by members of the Japanese ultra-nationalist militias.
The zealots believed that the local Koreans were ready to serve the advancing Russian forces as guides and were secretly providing intelligence to the Soviet command. The worst happened in a small village of Mizuho.
The population of the entire village, 27 people, including many children, was slaughtered with the utmost cruelty by their Japanese neighbors, most of whom were youngsters intoxicated with nationalist propaganda. In some other places, Japanese policemen killed imprisoned Koreans, also believed to be Soviet sympathizers.
However, the violence did not last. The Russian military took control over the area in less than two weeks. Soon it became clear that a large population transfer was going to happen, which was in line with the established practice of the era when changes of borders usually meant forced relocation of the population.
The Soviet authorities, the new masters of the island, made it clear that whether the Japanese wanted it or not, they would be required to leave the island within the next few years.
Initially, local Koreans believed that they would get to go home too. Rumors insisted that they would even have priority in boarding the ships.
However, from late 1945, the authorities made it clear: while Japanese would have to go, Koreans would have to stay. Those Koreans who came to the camps to board were immediately sent back, and the Soviet officials worked hard to ensure that no Korean would manage to sneak on a boat. The expectations of those Korean families who came to Korsakov in 1946 were unfounded. Koreans were trapped on an island on which most of them had never intended to stay for more than few years. Thus, a Korean Sakhalin community was born.