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

22 Chapter 2

while the numbers of Chinese miners increased. By 1910, there were only
150 (0.7%) Korean miners/clerks working with 3,336 (16.6%) Rus sian miner
workers in the Amur district. Koreans, prior to the enactment of these quo-
tas, comprised 4,006 miners and mining clerks, about 24  percent of the
total labor force (1906). At the same time, the quantity of Chinese miners
grew by large bounds; their numbers reached 16,622 (82.7  percent) laborers/
clerks in the Amur mines. Unterberger and his successor, N. L. Gondatti
(1911–1917) enacted hard- line policies towards Korean labor that lasted
until the end of Gondatti’s term in office. The petty bourgeois, small trad-
ers, and retail merchants (meschane) protested these restrictions on Asian
labor because of the immediate increases in their prices for labor, commod-
ity foodstuffs, and goods.^69 The previous governor- generals such as Duk-
hovskoi (1893–1898) and Grodekov (1898–1902) had allowed Koreans of
the first and second categories to become tsarist subjects. In contrast, Unter-
berger promoted the view that the Koreans were actually a more dangerous
ele ment than the Chinese. Unterberger saw the Koreans as an “unreliable
ele ment” that was settling in and populating the RFE, which was more
dangerous than the Chinese laborer who would sojourn, but would not
make the RFE his home.^70 He also made a statement that foreshadowed the
geopolitics of the Great Terror [the last sentences in the citation] stating:

We expect that even those Koreans who have become tsarist subjects,

converted to Orthodoxy, and will assimilate with the Rus sian population,

though there is no basis like experience to prove [my belief] that though

they have resided in the Southern Ussuri for over forty years, the Koreans

with a few exceptions have retained their own nationality [national charac-

ter] completely and remain in all aspects to us an alien people [italics mine]. We

absolutely cannot rely on the fidelity of this ele ment in the event of war with

Japan or China.^71

This quotation expresses a strong belief in the unchanging nature of the

Koreans.^72 Vladimir Arsenev echoed Unterberger’s sentiment when he

spoke about the assimilation of the Chinese in the RFE: “It is said that

there are some Chinese Christians who have accepted the Orthodox faith....

No matter how much effort is employed, a Chinese is a Chinese forever.”^73

I hall now examine Korean urban life in Rus s sia during the early twentieth

century. Urban life in the RFE introduced and assimilated the Koreans to

Rus sian culture. This Russification occurred naturally without the need for

special funding or state policies such as in the case of Blagoslovennoe. By

1910, Koreans had associations in sixteen urban areas in the RFE. The