170 Chapter 7autonomy” (other than Poset), was surely an ominous portent that their in-
digenization had a limited time frame.
In Central Asia, Koreans were in the category of being “administra-
tively exiled/settled,” but upon arriving they had to follow the same restric-
tions on movement as did “special settlers.”^105 Koreans were not settled in the
border regions in Central Asia (bordering China, Iran, and Af ghan i stan) by
state decree and were required to remain in their assigned raions.^106 Also,
they were issued passports that did not allow them to leave the union repub-
lic in which they were settled.^107 In other words, they did not have the same
rights as Soviet citizens who had not been deported. Furthermore, only Ko-
reans living outside of Central Asia and not in the labor army (1943–1946)
were allowed to serve in the Red Army in the Second World War.^108
Beginning in 1946, long after the fear of Japa nese espionage had been
dispelled, Koreans outside of the RFE were deported to Central Asia: 1,833
from Astrakhan; 25 from Moscow; 1,500 from Ukta, Komi ASSR; 1,027
from Tulskoi Oblast; and 700 from Okhotsk and Kamchatka.^109 Almost all
of the Koreans in Komi ASSR and Tulskoi Oblast had been serving in the
labor a rmy.
After their deportation to Central Asia and after 1939–1940 (when all
instruction was changed to Rus sian except biweekly Korean lessons), Soviet
Koreans underwent Soviet Russification along with the other nationalities
who were deported to Central Asia. National language education was elim-
inated for all of the deported nationalities by 1940. Evgenia Tskhai and
Soon Ok Lee noted that after the deportation Koreans began socializing
more with other nationalities. The lingua franca was Rus sian. Tskhai stated
that, in the 1940s, she began to see some intermarriage among Koreans,
usually with Poles or Germans in northern Kazakhstan.
EXCEPTIONS TO THE DEPORTATION AND THE CASE OF KHAIR IR TI,
AN NKVD TRANSLATORApproximately two thousand Koreans remained in North Sakhalin despite
the order for a total deportation. This was by state design and in part was
due to the difficulty of recruiting labor to work in the Soviet- Japanese con-
cessions, especially during the Terror, which magnified the consequences
of foreign contacts. In 1930, Japan had eight oil concessions in northern
Sakhalin.^110 Japan had concessions and joint ventures with Soviet enter-
prises in the Primorskii krai (formerly Primore), Okhotsk, western and
northern Kamchatka, and northern Sakhalin in 1929.^111 These concessions
produced hard currency for the Soviet leadership and state to the sum of
multiple millions of rubles annually. In 1937, most of the private enterprises