The Korean ethnic group is widely distributed on the Korean Peninsula and in the northeastern part of the mainland, but does anyone know that there are still 350,000 ethnic Koreans in Central Asia?
Speaking of which, many people may wonder how most Koreans can still have such a large scale in Central Asia, where most Koreans have lived on the peninsula and the northeast of the mainland for generations.
You know, the interior of Central Asia is very far from the coastal zone of East Asia, not to mention that these Koreans are about to forget their own national history in addition to their East Asian appearances.
There is no doubt that the ethnic Koreans currently living in Central Asia have fled from the Korean Peninsula to the Russian Far East.
In the 19th century, the Yi dynasty ruled Korea, but the dynasty was also at the end of its rule, with dark domestic politics, serious land annexation, and a small number of Korean nobles controlling most of the country's wealth and power.
Those powerless North Koreans are living in an extremely difficult environment. Not to mention, it also happened to be a critical juncture for East Asian countries to be pryed open by Western civilization with cannons, and life as colonies was even more miserable......
Against this backdrop, some people living at the bottom of the North Korean population could not find opportunities in China, so they began to leave North Korea and move to the northeast of the country, where the land is still vast and sparsely populated, and the Russian Far East to live.
These two lands are rich in products, and there is a large amount of land for these North Koreans to cultivate. As long as they can survive the cold winter and reclaim the land, they will be able to survive here. Therefore, by the end of the Joseon Dynasty, many Koreans had begun to emigrate to the Far East.
In 1910, for 35 years after the Korean government was forced to sign the Japan-Korea Merger Treaty with Japan, Korea remained a Japanese colony and accepted Japanese jurisdiction.
But many Koreans are staunchly opposed to Japanese rule, because Japan has been systematically eradicating Korean culture, forcing Korean children to learn Xi Japanese, and even frantically requisitioning Korean labor to serve their war of aggression.
As a result, many Koreans who were unwilling to serve the Japanese army left their homeland and came to some neighboring countries, including China and the Soviet Union. Even Kim Il-sung, the first leader of North Korea, fled to China with his father when he was young, and was a child who grew up in the northeast of the mainland.
There are so many people who come to China, and there are certainly not a few who go to the Soviet Union. Over time, a significant number of Koreans did settle in the Soviet Far East – but this still does not explain why so many Koreans later emigrated to Central Asia, which was linked to the Soviet Union's special frontier development policy.
Everyone knows that the Soviet Union was a vast land, and at its peak it had more than 22 million square kilometers of territory, more than twice the size of the mainland.
But the Soviet Union's population was less than 300 million at its peak, and the vast majority of the Soviet population lived in their most prosperous part of Europe, which meant that the Soviet government's control over the vast Asian territory was actually weak.
In the early and middle stages of the Soviet Union, there were thousands of miles of uninhabited people on the territory of the Soviet Union in Central Asia, Siberia, and even part of the Far East. Therefore, in order to solve this problem, the Soviet Union began to strengthen the development of sparsely populated areas.
As early as the implementation of the first five-year plan of the Soviet Union, they invested heavily in the construction of a sound industrial system and the construction of new modern towns in Central Asia. But the infrastructure is in place, the industrial production system is in place, and there is no real role for the people.
At first, the Soviet Union wanted to encourage people to migrate to Central Asia and Siberia through the introduction of subsidy policies. However, it is unrealistic for the Soviet people to abandon their ancestral land and move to a place where they are not familiar with their homeland for hundreds of years......
Moreover, even though the Soviet Union invested heavily in the development of Central Asia and Siberia, the overall development level of these places still lagged far behind the west of the Ural Mountains.
Therefore, even if a small number of people are willing to respond to the government's call to develop Central Asia and Siberia, they will still be a minority, and they will not be able to fill the local population gap. So the Soviet Union was the last to do forced emigration......
However, "forced emigration" will also cause various problems, and it will also damage the image and credibility of the government, and the Soviet Union has no way to carry out large-scale forced population migration of Russians and Ukrainians who dominate the country, so it can only target local ethnic minorities.
In any case, the Soviet Union was a multi-ethnic country, and there were many ethnic minorities in the country that could be fully utilized. During this period, the Soviet Union moved Germans living in the Volga Valley, Tatars and Kalmyks from the Crimea, and Koreans living in the Far East to Central Asia.
If the people in these places refuse to relocate, the government will help them move, and even in order to fundamentally solve the hope of these ethnic minorities to return home, the Soviet Union has abolished the establishment of those autonomous republics where ethnic minorities live.
At the same time, the Soviet Union also completely assimilated these minorities culturally and traditionally, making them forget their own history. From an objective point of view, the Soviet Union's measures were somewhat "one-size-fits-all," but they did have a positive effect on the economic and social development of Central Asia.
After having a sufficient population, the Soviet Union invested in the construction of more industrial facilities here, even space launch bases, military bases, and various scientific research facilities, which is one of the main reasons for the rapid development of Central Asia.
By the time the Soviet Union collapsed, the Central Asian republics had all industrialized – Kazakhstan, in particular, had even inherited nuclear weapons in the early days of the Soviet Union, and was once considered the world's leading military power, but then declined.
The forced relocation of the Soviet Union to Central Asia is also a hidden fact that there are many Koreans in Central Asia today. However, these Koreans actually live in Central Asia, which is not too bad a choice.
Today, the level of economic development of the Central Asian countries is still very impressive, and these countries have a lot of natural resources, coupled with the inheritance of the industrial and economic system of the Soviet Union, the future will be relatively bright.
To some extent, their ancestors migrated from the Korean Peninsula and finally settled in Central Asia after twists and turns, which can be regarded as a way out for future generations.