Soviet Island Koreans Look to Homeland

A sizable minority of Koreans, some of them stateless, are a reminder of unfinished business from World War II on the remote Soviet island of Sakhalin.

The Japanese ruled southern Sakhalin from 1905 to 1945 and brought thousands of Koreans there as slave laborers. Other Koreans came freely. When the defeated Japanese withdrew in 1945 and the island reverted to Soviet rule, the Koreans were abandoned. Now some survivors want to go home.

“My life is almost at an end,” an 80-year-old Korean woman, Lee Yong Jim, said. “I want to lay my bones on Korean soil with my ancestors.”

But Lee’s chances of returning home after more than 60 years are slim, since she cannot locate any surviving relatives in South Korea--and she is stateless.

Community leader Seo Yun Dzhun said 3,000 Koreans, mostly first-generation, want to leave Sakhalin forever to return to South Korea or Japan. Thousands more want to see relatives overseas and return to Sakhalin.

Journalist Kim Ben Ju, who writes for Sakhalin’s Korean-language newspaper, Lenin’s Way, said 35,000 Koreans now live on Sakhalin, compared to 43,000 at the end of World War II. The total population of the island, which is now a major Soviet military site, is about 700,000.

Virtually all 47,000 Japanese on Sakhalin at the end of the war were repatriated in 1945. The Koreans, however, were stuck in a diplomatic tangle.

Seo told Western reporters here on a rare visit: “The Koreans of Sakhalin wanted to return to their motherland in South Korea but when the Korean War (1950-53) broke out, it became impossible.”

Last year things improved for some Koreans who want to leave. They can now be reunited with relatives abroad if they get a letter of invitation to show the Soviet authorities.

The main barrier is the cost of the trip. Each departing resident may convert only 200 rubles, about $312, into foreign currency, and that is not enough to get to Seoul.

Recently South Korean opposition politicians demanded that Japan pay up to $5 billion in reparations to the displaced Koreans of Sakhalin.

But not all Koreans on Sakhalin are trying to leave. Many said they make a good living here and are generally satisfied.

“I came in 1942 because it was a good place. I wasn’t forced,” said retired miner Lee Chong Guk, 68.

The sun-weathered Lee married and later divorced a Russian woman and has a grown child. Sitting in a park in light drizzle, he said there is nowhere else he would rather live.

Koreans are a distinct presence in Sakhalin’s vegetable markets, selling what residents say is the best produce.

Soviets told reporters that Koreans are believed to have plenty of money saved because they work so hard but they said there is little mixing between the two communities.

Life has improved for the Koreans since Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev came to power in 1985 and launched perestroika (restructuring), his ambitious program of economic and political reform.

In 1963 all Korean schools and theaters on Sakhalin were closed as part of then Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev’s “Russification” program.

“Since perestroika , Korean language classes were started in high schools and the local university,” Kim said. There is now a daily 25-minute Korean language radio broadcast.

Kang I Gun, a 24-year-old student who once served in the Soviet army, said he was sorry he cannot speak Korean.

“I am lost without the language of my homeland,” Kang said bitterly.