Ever since the final years of Joseon, when ethnic Koreans moved north to the Russian territory of Primorsky Krai, the Korean diaspora has continued to disperse throughout the 20th century. The poet and novelist Poseok Jo Myeong-hui voluntarily joined the exiled community in 1928 in order to teach literature written in their mother tongue to those fighting for the independence of their homeland while struggling to survive in a new, unfamiliar home. To this day, Poseok is considered a pioneer amongst the literary community that writes in Korean outside the Korean peninsula. His poem “Koryo, Trampled Over,” which exposed the atrocities committed by Imperial Japan across the Korean peninsula at the time, was one of the reasons ethnic Koreans in the post-Soviet states started calling themselves “Koryo-saram,” meaning the people of Goryeo.

A group of Koryo-saram, who studied under Poseok for nearly a decade and published their works in Korean on the arts and literature pages of Seonbong (The Vanguard), began the small but flourishing culture of writing in Hangeul in the landlocked region of Central Asia, where many ethnic Koreans were forced to migrate in 1937 by Stalin. Leaving its first location in the Kazakh town of Ushtobe, the Korean newpaper Renin gichi (Lenin’s Banner), which was now renamed Koryo Ilbo (Koryo Daily), relocated to the city of Almaty and became a mecca for diaspora literature by ethnic Koreans in the post-Soviet states. Through the Korean newspapers and books published and distributed by the Communist Party, Koryo-saram were able to maintain their unique identity and develop a strong sense of unity.

The Communist Party published literary works by individual writers: selected works by Poseok, who has sacrificed himself in Primorsky Krai; poetry collections by Kim Jun, Kim Gwang-hyeon, and Ri Jin; a novel by Kim Jun; a collection of short stories by Kim Gi-cheol; a collection of various works of fiction by Yeon Seong-ryong; and a collection of plays by Han Jin. Numerous collections of various works were also published by the Communist Party, including Joseon Poetry in 1958, October Sunlight in 1971, Melody of Syrdariya in 1975, Sunflower in 1982, Homeland of Happiness in 1988, The Land Where Flowers Bloom in 1988, and The Light of Today in 1990. The steady publication of such works by ethnic Koreans using Hangeul was the product of the collective effort to preserve the culture and identity of a people struggling to survive away from their homeland.

Even in a harsh environment of enforced ideology and state censorship, these Koryo-saram writers strived to express their love for Hangeul as a way to appease their souls, distraught with nostalgia, by continuing to write in the Korean language. In his poem “I Am a Person of Joseon,” Kim Jun, who was forced to migrate from the Russian Far East, wrote: “In Russia, the Far East, / near the Iman River, I am a person of Joseon. / That is why the Joseon word for ‘mother’ / has deeper roots in my soul than any other.” And in the poem “Mother Tongue,” the poet and North Korean defector Maeng Dong-uk speaks: “My mother tongue is my companion. / So I am never lonely. / Never sad. / Happiness lifts me high.”

     Meanwhile, there is also a list of poems that sing their deep longing to return home, to escape from lives as wanderers in an unfamiliar land. One of the most controversial was by Gang Taesu, a poet who was incarcerated for two decades for composing “To the Maiden Who Was Plowing the Fields.” Gang was accused of expressing nostalgia for his homeland in public just when the forced relocations had begun. In “Arirang,” Gang asks: “Arirang, arirang, / that hill, that ridge / I cry out with yearning, / is it in the South? / Is it in the North?” And then, in “Blood Ties,” the Sakhalin-born Jeong Jang-gil sings: “Does one’s homeland begin at the door of one’s childhood home? / . . . What one longs for in times of pain / is to see one’s mother. / Is that why one’s homeland is also called one’s motherland?” Another poet and North Korean defector Yang Won-sik expresses his nostalgia in “Full Moon”: “The full moon I saw yesterday, / do I have an unusually strong affection for it / because even though I have drifted so far from home, / it has followed me all the way? . . . The unforgettabele mountains and rivers back home, / can I see them reflected on the surface of the moon?”

Works of fiction also show efforts to preserve traditional Korean customs and holidays. Kim Gi-cheol’s novella The First Year After Migration is a story about the first wave of Koryo-saram to be relocated. During their difficult lives working at a kolhoz, or a collective farm, trying to cultivate the barren lands of Central Asia, the community of Koryo-saram preserves their Korean customs, getting together on Lunar New Year’s Day to share rice cake soup, perform ancestral rites, and bow to wish each other good fortune in the coming year.

The short story “Fear” by Han Jin is based on a true incident about the early, horrific days of relocation. The Jewish provost of a university orders a collection of ancient Korean texts to be destroyed. The protagonist Professor Ri goes inside kiln where the texts are about to be burned, and sends them to the National Library in Almaty to be preserved as cultural assets. In another short story “What Is That Place Called?,” Han includes a scene where a dying mother teaches her daughter, who does not speak a word of Korean, how to conduct traditional Korean funeral rites, explaining each step in Korean, including how to dress the dead with specific burial clothes and how the family of the deceased should be dressed.

Plays have been written and staged since the time prior to relocation in the Joseon Theater in the Russian Far East, and more recently in the Koryo Theater in Almaty, with traditional Korean folktales being adapted for the stage as a way to continue their search for their cultural identity. Some of the plays are Heungbu and Nolbu, adapted for the stage by Tae Jang-chun; The Tale of Chunhyang, adapted for the stage by Yeon Seong-ryong and Yi Jong-rim; Hong Gil-dong, adapted for the stage by Kim Gi-cheol; Arirang and The Tale of Sim Cheong, written and adapted, respectively, for the stage by Chae Yeong; and The Tale of Minor Official Bae, adapted for the stage by Maeng Dong-uk.

Recently, however, with most of the first and 1.5 generations of the Koryo-saram writers in Central Asia having passed away or no longer capable of continuing their work, an increasingly fewer number of their literary efforts are being written in the Korean language. Instead, the later generations are gaining attention with literary works written in Russian. One third-generation novelist Anatoli Kim, born in 1939 in a Koryo-saram community in Kazakhstan, is currently one of the best known throughout the world. Having graduated from the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute as an aspiring artist, Kim published his first piece of fiction in 1973, and was later recognized for his literary talent with The Squirrel, a novel about the identity crisis of a young man orphaned during the Korean War, and Father Forest. A descendant of the Kim clan of Jincheon in Gangneung, the author considers the Korean peninsula as the motherland of his soul. His works thus reflect an East Asian spiritual world against the backdrop of Russian-speaking countries, telling a story not by using the traditional linear notion of time, or Soviet realism, but instead by creating a romantic fantasy of unique polyphony.

The mystery writer Roman Kim was born in 1899 in Primorsky Krai, studied in Japan, and returned to write historical novels including The Assassination of Queen Min, The Maiden From Hiroshima, and The Memoirs Discovered in Suncheon. Yuliy Kim, born in 1936 in Khabarovsk, is famous for writing poetry as the people’s protest against the system. Once considered an idol of young students with his song “My Mother,” Kim expressed the pain and difficulties of the diasporic life of the Koryo-saram even in his works that were filled with wit and humor. 

by Rhee Myung-jae

Literary Critic and Professor Emeritus

Chung-Ang University