Changes in the Political Topography in the Korean Community in the Russian Maritime Province in the Mid-1920s
Journal Title: International Journal of Korean History - Year 2013, Vol 18, Issue 1
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to shed light on how the political topography of the Korean community in the Russian Maritime Province changed, in 1922 and thereafter, with the end of the Russian Civil War in Siberia. Koreans in the region had fought on the side of the Soviet Red Army against the White Army of Russia and the international intervention army in that war, and had come out as victors. After the war, came an era of reconstruction. Koreans in the region had to adapt to the changing situation in the province. Korean partisan guerrillas who had fought on the side of the Red Army and Russian guerrillas now had to build a new life. A majority of them chose to stay there and applied themselves to the work of building socialism and participating in the fulfillment of the Russian revolution. Meanwhile, some of them chose to continue the struggle for their home country’s independence and left for new sites, including Manchuria and China, to campaign against Imperial Japan. Some of them were dispatched to Korea with the aim of fulfilling the objective of the Korean revolution and helping organize the Korean Communist Party and the national liberation movement. Many of these people were affiliated with the Shanghai Faction of the Korean Communist Party. The positions left vacant by their departure came to be filled by people who had returned to the Russian Maritime Province following the end of the civil war. They were mostly those affiliated, directly or indirectly, with the Irkutsk Faction of the Korean Communist Party. Senior members of the old Korean National Council, who had left the Maritime Province after the massacre of Koreans in the province’s New Korean Town by the Japanese army, in April 1920, returned in droves. They soon took up important positions in the party and the soviet, and so increased their influence on the Korean community. In this process, senior members of the old Korean National Council came to play a leading role in the province. Such was the political topography of the Korean community in the Russian Maritime Province in the mid-1920s. Amid such changes, the Russian Maritime Province, including Vladivostok, which had served as the center of the overseas national liberation movement for Korea between 1910 and the early 1920s, could no longer play such a role. Koreans in the province applied themselves to working for the construction of socialism and for the enhancement of the living standards of Koreans in Russia.
Authors and Affiliations
Sangwon Yun
Keywords
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