162 Chapter 7
loyalties w ere distinct from other Koreans such as those from Korea, Japan,
or China, the total deportation of the Koreans from the RFE would not
have taken place.^59
In addition, there is the question of Japa nese intelligence practices,
which have demonstrated that the Japa nese would not have targeted Soviet
Koreans as a reverse piedmont. The Narkomfin report, which was compiled
with the help of the OGPU, reported on five Japa nese spies and their activi-
ties. These spies collected information individually without attempting to
recruit or build cells. In this case, the Japa nese spies functioned as jacks- of-
all- trades assuming the roles of case officer and field agent. They also returned
to Manchuria and Japan in all likelihood to give their reports to superiors.
Furthermore, they provided for their own expenses as currency counter-
feiters by design, making their operations fully in de pen dent without leaving
a paper trail linking them to Japan.^60 Thus, Japa n ese agents (low- profile tar-
gets) would most prob ably have collected information by living and working
among the general RFE population. They would not have needed to recruit
Koreans to carry out what they themselves were already doing.
The Soviet intelligence organs had collected a large amount of infor-
mation and details on Japa nese espionage rings that had penetrated Soviet
institutions, factories, and cadre groups— that is, high- profile targets.^61 The
Japa nese recruited disaffected nationalities from outside of the Soviet Union
to return to the USSR, attain citizenship, and penetrate Soviet institutions
or the target person/group. There was no such Soviet Korean opposition group
outside the Soviet Union. Therefore, as demonstrated, Japa nese espionage
would not have used Soviet Koreans in either of the two aforementioned
scenarios.
Fi nally, Japan did not employ fifth- column uprisings in any of the
vari ous Asian countries they invaded before and during the Second World
Wa r.^62 Vari ous Japa nese military cliques were in control of the decisions to
invade Manchuria, the assassination of Chang Tso- lin, the establishment of
Manchukuo, and the decision to invade China. They did not need uprisings
to justify war, because the military was in control of international policy
decision making in many cases during the 1930s and 1940s.^63 The Stalinist
regime feared that the diaspora nationalities such as the Koreans might
have switched sides during a Japa nese invasion.^64 This hypothesis should be
struck down based on the history of the RFE Koreans from the Interven-
tion through 1937.
Article 5 of the first deportation order (1428–326ss) demonstrated that
the Koreans were not a fifth- column threat, because the logic of the mass
operations was that they were enacted to catch a purported 2 to 5 percent of
the population who were pos si ble traitors even if 95 to 98 percent of the