Korean Korenizatsiia and Its Socialist Construction 75On December 17, 1927, Comrade Mamaev of the Far Eastern Re-
gional Land Administration described the situation regarding the “Korean
Question” to his regional boss, Comrade Trofimov, the Regional Executive
Committee’s secretary. In par tic u lar, he addressed the disputes between
Rus sians and Koreans, the rate of land distribution, and the general living
standards of the Koreans. Mamaev stated that every spring Rus sians and
Koreans battled over the land and resources needed to work the land. Typi-
cally, Rus sians rented out the private parcels, whereas Koreans would work
the land as tenant farmers, find a nearby vacant patch of land, and then pe-
tition the local Soviet land bureaus (such as Meliozem Otdel or Kraizem
Otdel) to grant them land nearby. Typically, this land was that which had
not yet been cleared or was left fallow. From 1923 onward, the battle for
land intensified because of the lucrative and newly introduced initiative of
growing rice instead of the previous crops such as corn, potatoes, wheat, and
millet. Japan was buying rice and had recently ( after 1925) begun to initiate
joint- venture companies that grew it. Rice could be grown in high beds,
requiring less land than grain crops. But the key to rice growing was to have
sources of abundant water nearby.^115 Mamaev stated:
The high profitability of rice- growing land has called forth a desire for
the expulsion of Koreans from all land that is more or less suited for
growing rice. Moreover, members of Rus sian society, especially those
engaged in land reclamation, want to use these lands and fill them up in
an orderly manner to work together with Koreans, where the basic labor
will be Korean. The harvest will be divided roughly in half. A part [some]
of those changing over to use Koreans fear the long term residence of
Koreans on their sections of land. The result is a strug gle for land and
a strug gle for water that one can see has led to the growth in national
hostilities. Rus sian peasants have gotten in the habit of viewing and
continue to view Koreans as objects of legal exploitation as “their” semi-
serf workers (polukrepostnykh rabotnikov). This is reflected in everyday expres-
sions like “my Koreans” or “our Koreans” [italics mine].^116The Regional Land Administration figures for land distribution to Koreans
(families/house holds) were the following: 1923 yr. (931 families); 1924 yr. (717
families); 1925 yr. (2,938 families); 1926 (1417 families). From 1863 to 1917,
three thousand Korean families became landowners in the Rus sian Far East
(the Primore and Khabarovsk krai). Six thousand and three Korean families
received land from 1923 to 1926, which left ten thousand still without land.
The prob lem was exacerbated by an incalculable number of Korean illegal
mi g rants who were still flowing into the RFE from Manchuria and Korea.