The Korean Deportation and Life in Central Asia 157portation order was given by Stalin (no. 1428–326ss), Soviet officials and
NKVD officers began to openly denigrate the deportees as being guilty of
the charges of espionage. All Koreans in the OKDVA who were performing
border guard duties as of August 29th, 1937 were recalled and dismissed. On
August 29th, the NKVD chief Ezhov sent a coded tele gram to Lushkov,
the RFE’s NKVD chief stating, “... It was necessary to wait a few days
so that the Khabarovsk administration of the NKVD could prepare their
own proposal on the dispatching of the ‘fifth columnists’ in the Korean
community and pres ent them [several proposals] to the Center [Moscow]
which immediately approved the mea sures ‘regarding the or ga ni za tion of
agents of the Koreans.’ ” In a report from Ezhov to Stalin on the pro gress of
the deportation (sometime in late September 1937), Ezhov wrote, “ These
Koreans are without a doubt cadres of Japa nese espionage.” A special report
compiled by NKVD agents during the deportation quoted Li No Un (a de-
portee) as declaring, “The NKVD sees in every Korean, a spy.”^36 Kulaks
were deported in accordance with Decree 00447 because the USSR was anti-
capitalist and antibourgeois and rich peasants were part of the enemy class.
But the 172,000 deported Koreans ran the gamut of every class, especially
those of middle and poor peasants as most Koreans were rural.^37
On October 30, the last labor colonists and Koreans from Kamchatka
were sent from Vladivostok to Central Asia. A total of 172,597 Koreans
(36,681 families) were deported from the Rus sian Far East.^38 The Soviet
Koreans suffered a mortality rate of 16.3 percent during deportation. A
demographer, D. M. Ediev, also calculated that, as a result of the deaths
from the deportation and subsequent conditions, Koreans suffered an addi-
tional 10 percent population loss— that is, a deficit of decreased births due
to the deportation.^39
So En Khvan stated that Koreans from northern Sakhalin were not
deported.^40 In 1932, the Soviet census showed a Korean population of
3,200 in North Sakhalin. This population most likely continued to increase
until 1935/1936.^41 In spring 1937, some 2,000 Soviet workers from main-
land Rus s ia were recruited to work on the North Sakhalin Soviet- Japanese
concessions. They were brought to Vladivostok and only later transported to
North Sakhalin in August 1937. Suddenly, in September 1937, 2,500 Soviet
workers were fired from the concessions.^42 Some local laborers (perhaps as
many as 2,500) were likely used as replacements.
As part of the Korean deportation in October 1937, 1,155 Koreans
from North Sakhalin were picked up and sent (by ship) to Vladivostok.^43
This leaves approximately 2,045 Koreans unaccounted for using the last
available census of 1932. A letter from the American Embassy in Tokyo