72 Chapter 4and five Rus sian teachers.^98 Incredibly, the Korean literacy rate rose to
48 p ercent by 1928 and, fi nally, to 90 percent literacy in the Primorskii by1930.^99 The 48 percent literacy rate matched that for Rus sians, who achieved
a 45 percent literacy rate in 1926.^100 But Koreans were still labelled as a
“backward nationality” or as an uncultured people who were outstanding
agriculturalists.^101 Regardless, the campaign was a success, and in the sphere
of education the Koreans were seen as being quite adaptable and malleable to
Soviet programs.
It is said that Koreans revered education, and those in the RFE were
no diff er ent. Maria Pak remembers her school in Padushi having only one
blackboard. The village was poor, and students did not have money to buy
notebooks. Instead, they had their parents make them little wood picture
frames about three inches deep. These wooden frames would hold sand.
Students would bring them to school and copy the lesson by having the
teacher write in the sand in the wooden frame.^102 En Ho Lee and Pyotr Pak
remembered studying Korean using Chinese characters. Gum Soi Kim used
her education to help her parents when calculating how much they needed to
pay for rent. She said: “The Korean farmers did not know how many hect-
ares they were sowing. They were not educated so they could not accurately
count how much land they had worked. They were often taken advantage of.
But I was educated, I knew how to count [hectares]. I helped my father cal-
culate how much land he had tilled and worked so he would not be cheated.”
Her family paid about 10–15 percent of the harvest as rent for the land.^103
Education was perhaps the most impor tant tool for transforming peasants into
Soviet men and women who understood the precepts of socialism. Koreans
were well represented among students in high education, CP schools, and
rabfaks (schools for urban workers). This would bode well for their inclusion
in all types of Soviet institutions and professions.
Now I s hall examine specific events during korenizatsiia that were
brought to light by Krasnoe znamia. In February 1923, it was announced
that in two university faculties there would be courses and departments to
“study the East” and that there would be a greater emphasis now than be-
fore. One of the faculties would be based in St. Petersburg (the Lazarevskii
Institute), while the other, the Far Eastern Institute, was located in Vladi-
vostok. Krasnoe znamia stated, “We need to pay more attention to learn more
about the East, the celestials and the rising sun, we need to learn about the
mentality of our neighbors.”^104 Unfortunately, most gradu ates of the Far
Eastern Institute and St. Petersburg remained in academia rather than serv-
ing as state, army, or police translators.^105 Dalkrai police and local authorities
would have very few Rus sians who could understand or translate East Asian