Deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union

Deportation of the Koreans in the Soviet Union
Part of Population transfer in the Soviet Union and Mass operations of the NKVD
Map of the deportation of Korean people from the Russian Far East to the Soviet Central Asia   Kazakh SSR, Uzbek SSR (destination of the deportees)
Location	Primorsky Krai
Date	September–October 1937
Target	Soviet Koreans
Attack type	Forcible displacement, ethnic cleansing
Deaths	Several estimates 1) 16,500[1] 2) 28,200[2] 3) 40,000[3] 4) 50,000[4] (10%–25% mortality rate)
Victims	172,000 Koreans deported to forced settlements in the Soviet Union
Perpetrators	NKVD
Motive	"Frontier cleansing",[5] Russification[6]

The deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union (Russian: Депортация корейцев в СССР; Korean: 고려인의 강제 이주) was the forced transfer of nearly 172,000 Soviet Koreans (Koryo-saram) from the Russian Far East to unpopulated areas of the Kazakh SSR and the Uzbek SSR in 1937 by the NKVD on the orders of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union Vyacheslav Molotov. 124 trains were used to resettle them 6,400 km (4,000 miles) to Central Asia. The reason was to stem "the infiltration of Japanese espionage into the Far Eastern Krai", as Koreans were at the time subjects of the Empire of Japan, which was the Soviet Union's rival. However, some historians regard it as part of Stalin's policy of "frontier cleansing". Estimates based on population statistics suggest that between 16,500 and 50,000 deported Koreans died from starvation, exposure, and difficulties adapting to their new environment in exile.

After Nikita Khrushchev became the new Soviet Premier in 1953 and undertook a process of de-Stalinization, he condemned Stalin's ethnic deportations, but did not mention Soviet Koreans among these exiled nationalities. The exiled Koreans remained living in Central Asia, integrating into the Kazakh and Uzbek society, but the new generations gradually lost their culture and language.

This marked the precedent of the first Soviet ethnic deportation of an entire nationality,^[7] which was later repeated during the population transfer in the Soviet Union during and after World War II when millions of people belonging to other ethnic groups were resettled. Modern historians and scholars view this deportation as an example of a racist policy in the USSR^[8][9][10] and ethnic cleansing, common of Stalinism, as well as a crime against humanity.