The Korean Deportation and Life in Central Asia 161partisans fought in de pen dently of Soviet and or Red Army support or rec-
ognition. During the 1930s, there were no acts of uprising/sabotage, nor
were there any known Korean “spies” that the Soviet government found and
verified. The Soviet archives produced only this: “A number of categories
contained those viewed as potential targets for recruitment by foreign intel-
ligence: members of German, Polish, Japa nese, Korean and other ethnic
groups.”^56 While there may have been some evidence of fifth columnists
among some nationalities, there were none to support the idea of fifth col-
umnists among Soviet Koreans, only that they were “potential targets.”
In the previous chapters, I have sought to demonstrate that RFE Ko-
reans developed strong allegiances to tsarist Rus sia and then to the Soviet
state. Korenizatsiia and their success in the field of education were attempts
by the Koreans to remake themselves as “new Soviet men.” The first steps in
this remaking were the literacy campaigns and large influx of Koreans into
institutions of higher education in the early to mid-1920s. These were fol-
lowed by a large cohort of Koreans who moved into jobs in Soviet ministries,
institutions, and even the NKVD. In this way, Koreans forged ahead as
educated specialists and cadres in spirit in order to transform the USSR and
with an eventual eye towards painting the world Bolshevik red.^57 Earlier, Af-
anasii Kim, chairman of the Poset VKP (Communist Party) requested that
stronger vigilance be applied to Korean kulaks. He also sided with the state
over the ten tractors that the Koreans demanded for their kolkhozes, stating
that the matter was “complicated.” He, along with Li Kvar, proved their
allegiances to the Party even at the expense of community support. The
Japa nese recognized the Koreans’ strong identification with Bolshevism and
simply labeled them “malcontents” of the Japa nese Empire.^58
Fi nally, there is the issue of geopolitics within East Asia and Japan’s
colonization of Korea. The latter helps to explain why the Soviet Koreans
were extremely loyal both as communists and as a Soviet vanguard force in
the vari ous wars and conflicts fought on Soviet soil and Manchuria from
1918 (the Rus sian Civil War) onward. For this reason and others (such as
the teaching of Soviet ideology in their educational system, the USSR as a
multinational homeland), the Soviet Koreans were not and would not have
been any less loyal than any of the other Soviet nationalities, including the
Rus sians. In point of fact, their loyalties had already been tested during two
wars (1918–1922 and 1929). Furthermore, the numerous RFE border
brigades manned by Korean farmers during the tense, warlike atmosphere
since Japan’s occupation of Manchuria (1931) were further proof that their
loyalties were widespread, reaching every hamlet. If Stalin and the Soviet
state had kept an open mind towards the Koreans, and if they had truly
regarded the Soviet Koreans as a socio- historical group whose po liti cal