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

Security Concerns Trumping Korenizatsiia 149

Espionage in the Far East” stated that any Chinese or Korean could be a

hidden agent. It explic itly named every occupation in which the Chinese

and the Koreans typically worked and stated that Japa nese spies were working

in these occupations. This unrelenting die- cast description was simply the

creation of a Soviet “yellow peril.” Here is a relevant excerpt:

Japa nese agents are especially numerous among Buddhist believers,

Buddhist monks, and Rus sian priests and work at the [Buddhist] temples.

These people or ga nize Japa nese espionage and Japa nese sabotage. It is widely

known that Japa nese officers of espionage have been settled internationally under

the guise of laundrymen, barbers, house servants, maids, butlers, cooks, and coolie

dockworkers [italics mine] intended for the perpetration of acts of sabotage

in the verdict of a probable opponent. In the Soviet waters of the Pacific

Ocean and the Sea of Japan, there are officer spies under the pretense of

being employees of the Japa nese fishing industry [this also targeted Chinese

and Korean fisherman, as almost all of the 1,500 Japa nese working in the

RFE were evacuated before and during the summer of 1937]. It is well

known that the Japa nese attempted to transfer officers posing as Koreans

and Chinese to the USSR for the purpose of espionage.^162

The three Pravda articles of 1937 listed all of the most common occupa-
tions of Chinese and Koreans and classified all of those occupations as sources
of Japa nese espionage. The nature of 1937, the apex of the Great Terror, was
a year when NKVD officers could arrest anyone at any time and in groups
of three; the “troikas” could also determine sentencing on the spot. They
were allowed to check the documents of any citizen suspected of being part
of an “anti- Soviet ele ment.” Given this background, the Pravda articles left
little doubt that the Koreans and the Chinese could not be “reforged” as
Soviet men. It is worth repeating that every single category of Chinese and
Koreans was linked to Japa nese espionage.^163 Pravda’s creation of a Soviet
yellow peril was similar to Geitman’s statement (in Chapter  5) about the
eviction of Chinese merchants and their later reappearance as Koreans or
Japa nese, except in this case the Chinese and Koreans evolved into Japa nese
spies. The end result was that the Pravda articles created an atmosphere of
terror that could only be relieved by the physical removal of said culprits.
Prior to the Korean deportation, the Soviet press under Stalin’s edi-
torial eye created a Japa nese menace that could be everywhere and literally
change shape and form.^164 This was a more complex version of the yellow
peril trope. It was chauvinistic in ways that were not as discriminatory
towards the Rus sian White Guardists who were also singled out by Pravda as
potential spies. At least in theory, a Rus sian could point to CP membership,