98 Chapter 5Thus, despite its fears of “reverse piedmonts,” the Soviet Union was support-
ing many communist and socialist movements and piedmonts within Eu rope
and Asia during the 1920s and 1930s.
At the end of 1926, the trial of a second Soviet Korean for espionage
during the Intervention (1918–1923) began. Dmitrii Viktorovich Li was
discovered to have spied for the Japa nese during the Intervention. He was
from the middle class and had attended one year of institute in St. Peters-
burg before leaving school. In 1920, he began reporting on Korean partisan
activities for the Japa nese military staff in Vladivostok. He had infiltrated a
Korean partisan regiment, gained the trust of his superiors, and then began
his intelligence work, which led to the capture and execution of Tan Din
San, one of the most prominent Korean partisan leaders. It is noted that Li
spoke Rus sian without an accent. At his trial he was called “a class enemy of
the Korean batrak (poor farmer).” Surprisingly, he was not sentenced to
death. Instead, he received a relatively light sentence of eight years in prison,
plus an additional five- year disenfranchisement of all legal rights.^82
After Intervention, Soviet OGPU and others found two Soviet Kore-
ans who worked for the Japa nese. An entire Korean section of the OGPU
with Korean agents was set up to monitor and investigate primarily Kore-
ans. The trope of “yellow peril” was rarely stated, but the constant repetition
of statements and imagery linking Koreans with the Japa nese Empire
evoked it. This imagery and its repetition marginalized Koreans as an alien
people. Two Soviet Koreans who worked or were subverted while the Japa-
nese jointly ruled the RFE for five years is perhaps one of the lowest totals
among all Soviet nationalities for treason during the civil war/Intervention.
The two trials (Dmitrii Li and Chan Kuk San) configured the imagery of a
Japa nese enemy ready to subvert and reconquer the RFE. This, coupled
with the 1925 Soviet- Japanese Convention (which signaled the return of
actual Japa nese citizens), vivified the trope of Japa nese expansion and
“yellow peril” in the form of the Japa nese and the Koreans (see Figure 6).
In June 1927, it was revealed that Soviet Korean bureaucrats and office
workers (sluzhashchie) in rural kolkhozes were speaking Rus sian and com-
pleting their administrative work in Rus sian at least 40 percent of the time.^83
The article noted that Koreans were 34 percent of the population in the
Vladivostok region (okrug), but comprised only 10 percent of that region’s
bureaucratic apparatus.^84 In 1927, the links between Chinese and Korean
laborers began to strengthen. One example of class unity among nationali-
ties was the DoDD, a Komsomol- type group that worked to protect
children’s rights. Five hundred Korean DoDD members visited Chinese
child laborers conducting political- cultural work in the Poset district.^85 Just
as these relations grew between the Chinese, the Koreans, the Rus sians,