Burnt by the Sun. The Koreans of the Russian Far East - Jon K. Chang

Introduction 7

Korean deportees who were interviewed ranged from seven to twenty- four
at the time of their deportation in 1937.
Oral history helped this study to capture the interrelationships be-
tween the Koreans, the Rus sians, and the Chinese, which was remarkably
absent from most archival files. I took advantage of the opportunity to in-
terrogate the subject of Korean life in the RFE in the 1920s–1930s with the
surviving deportees. In regard to certain aspects of the Stalinist nationalities

Map 1. The Primore of the Rus sian Far East. This is the area where the Koreans and
Chinese primarily resided prior to 1937–1938. Map adapted from the Soviet Atlas of 1987,
Atlas Mira (Moscow: Glavnoe upravlenie geodezii i kartografii, 1987), 41.