138 Chapter 6Memorandum 535, was finished and sent to Moscow on August 29, 1937,
addressed to Ezhov, the head of the NKVD. The memorandum was con-
current with resolution 1428–326ss, issued on August 21, 1937, for the de-
portation of the Koreans from the RFE. Blukher’s list of Korean officers
was incomplete and listed only thirty- seven Koreans (see Table 6). It is pos-
si ble that Stalin rather than Ezhov made the initial request for Memoran-
dum 535.^118 The request that this list be drawn up demonstrates that the
suspicions about Koreans had permeated all levels and regions of the Soviet
state. Despite their allegiance and ser vice to Soviet power in vari ous con-
flicts through two de cades, the Korean OKDVA soldiers and officers who
were purged were anything but “suspect.”
Turning to the nonmilitary “assistance brigades,” in 1934–1936, over
70 percent of the assistance brigades were formed by local farmers and
kolkhozniks— that is, collective farmers including Koreans— and were
formed throughout the RFE on border points with Manchuria and Korea.^119
At the end of 1934, there were 121 border- guard brigades consisting of
1,259 members. “Assistance brigades” in non- border DVK areas numbered
124 brigades with 1,042 members. All of the self- defense unit’s members
earned bonuses for their work. These units counted 40,361 border violations
from 1934 to 1936.^120 The Soviet authorities had ordered the assistance bri-
gades to be formed, and the Koreans performed the duties of defending the
Soviet borders, watching for border transgressions, acts of diversion and
sabotage, and defending their kolkhozes.^121 At least two Korean farmers were
recognized by the Soviet military for their border- guard work in the 1930s.
In 1936, the collective farmer Li En Sen of the Kolkhoz Gorlenskov cap-
tured and held two diversionists who were crossing the border. A. Kim, also
a collective farmer, was awarded the Soviet Mark of Honor for the success-
ful capture and reporting of illegal border crossings and diversionists.^122
Koreans also participated in the Red Army border brigades. J. B.
Powell, an American journalist, reported seeing a Korean Red Army regiment
(between November 1935 and January 1936) conducting its daily drills and
marching alongside other OKDVA/Red Army border- guard units in Vlad-
ivostok.^123 Regarding the Korean Red Army border brigades, Powell later
provided an oral report to the U.S. Embassy vice- consul Allison, who wrote:
“Between Vladivostok and Habarovsk [sic] are over 100,000 Koreans, many
of them in the army. In one small town, Mr. Powell saw a unit of two hundred
Red soldiers instructing the villa gers in anti- aircraft defense and every one
of the two hundred was a Korean.”^124 Powell also provided a short report,
unknowingly, on Khan Chan Gol to Vice- Consul Allison. He mistakenly
assumed that Khan was Chinese. Khan was prob ably the highest- ranking
East Asian in the OGPU/NKVD as the head of Birobidzhan’s Third