Koreans in Transnational Diasporas of the Russian Far East and Manchuria, 1895–1920

Arirang People

Hye Ok Park

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032001647
• eBook ISBN: 9781000442595
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Much attention has been paid to the Japanese deployment of Koreans in their war efforts during WWII. Much less attention, however, has been given to the subject prior to 1910. This book will: 1) present the evidence which reveals the presence of Koreans in the Japanese military during the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905, as seen by an American novelist Jack London, before the formal annexation of Korea by Japan; 2) analyze the presence of Koreans on the Japanese and the Russian sides of the war; and 3) investigate why and how these Koreans became involved in someone else's war.

Arirang, a Korean folksong favored and sung by Koreans at home and in exile, has sustained the Korean people in a shared, collective spirit throughout their lives in transnational diasporas in the Russian Far East, Manchuria, and Japan as well as in Korea. This is a study of transnational Koreans as the Arirang people: Chapter 1: Introduction, Chapter 2: Koreans in the Russian Far East and Manchuria, Chapter 3: Koreans in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905, Chapter 4: Korean Transnationals as Stateless People, 1906–1920, and the Conclusion.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003173038-1

This Introduction presents the historiography of the existing scholarship on Korea’s opening and its modernization efforts in the final years of the Yi Dynasty of Chosun. Also described are the historical contexts on sharecropping practices and the tax burden, called the skeleton levy (白骨徵包), on Chosun’s populace in the corrupt Yangban society, further exacerbated by the Sino-Japanese War’s (1894–1895) devastating effects on farmers. These factors forced Korea’s poor to migrate to the Russian Far East and Manchuria on a massive scale between 1895 and 1920.

A-ri-rang A-ri-rang A-ra-rio,

You are going over the peak of A-ri-rang,

My love, you are leaving me behind,

Your feet will get sore before you reach ten li.

A-ri-rang A-ri-rang A-ra-rio,

You are going over the peak of A-ri-rang,

As many as are the stars in the sky,

So are the many dreams in my heart.

A-ri-rang A-ri-rang A-ra-rio,

You are going over the peak of A-ri-rang,

Over yonder is Baik-du-san Mountain,

Full of blossoms in wintry cold December.

“It’s an ancient Korean song of the Exiles,” said Bruce Albert Wilder Taylor, the chief engineer and manager of the Unsan Gold Mines in Hamgyong Province, Korea, to his newlywed English wife Mary Linley, when he heard someone outside the window humming Arirang one night. “It always reminds me of the Volga Boat Song. No matter what words they put to it, and they have dozens of interpretations, the tune itself has a political meaning. It’s a sort of pass-word,” explained Bruce to Mary in 1917.¹

Arirang is a folk song of the Korean people. It is so popular that it is almost better known than Korea’s national anthem and was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2012. Believed to have originated from the town of Jeongsun in Kangwon Province, thus called Jeongseon Arirang by some, the song has about 3,600 variations of 60 different versions, such as Jindo Arirang and Miryang Arirang.² As Bruce told Mary, Koreans used Arirang to pass secret codes to each other during the Russo-Japanese War. The song became a resistance anthem of Korea during the Japanese colonial occupation period (1910–1945).

Arirang was indeed the most favored folk song of Korean people at home and in exile. During the hard times, as there were many, in Korea’s history, the song has sustained the Korean people in a shared, collective spirit throughout their lives in transnational diasporas in the Russian Far East, Manchuria, and Japan, as well as in Korea. Therefore, it seems appropriate that this book uses the song with its verses to denote the chapters: Chapter 1: Introduction, Chapter 2: Koreans in the Russian Far East and Manchuria, Chapter 3: Koreans in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–1905, Chapter 4: Korean Transnationals as Stateless People, 1906–1920, and the Conclusion.

The first verse of the Song of Arirang expresses the sadness and apprehension of being separated from loved ones—be it a lover, family, neighbors, or country. Similarly, Chapter 2 discusses how destitute peasants packed up and crossed the borders to escape hunger, disease, and abuse from the upper class in Korean society and the corrupt government. It describes the parallel paths of migration, taken simultaneously by the Koreans into the Russian Far East and Manchuria from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Those who took the northeastern route across the Tumen River struggled to make their new lives as Tsarist subjects of Russia. The northwestern path over the Yalu River did not prove any safer or easier, as Manchuria was already crowded with other ethnic groups.

The second verse portrays their new lives in strange lands, struggling to make it work as another hardship was dealt them in the form of the Russo-Japanese War, as examined in Chapter 3. Korean transnational migrants had to choose whether to continue to live in secluded exile or engage themselves as spies or soldiers on either side of the belligerent nations, Russia or Japan. Also studied are the circumstances behind their deployment, whether voluntary or coerced, and what would have motivated them to participate on either side of the war as transnational people of Korean diasporas in the Russian Far East and Manchuria. Their longing for loved ones back home continued in their wish to unite their gazes heavenwards, counting many stars and dreams, together in spirit.

The third verse expresses the sorrowful grief of Korean transnationals as they became stateless and inferior subjects of the colonizer, Japan. Chapter 4 portrays their lives, which became more difficult and complicated as their newly adopted countries went through revolutions, regime changes, and financial difficulties, as Russia and China relinquished their former glorious empires and adopted communism.

The final verse of Arirang laments the river of no return for these transnationals, long lost without a homeland to return to, leading to the Conclusion of this book. These diaspora people had no choice but to continue to migrate from one place to another, not knowing what lay ahead but still determined to work hard and survive in their given situation. The Conclusion describes Korean transnationals as they continued their journeys in the Russian Far East and Manchuria after 1920.

Much attention, scholarly and popular, has been given to the Japanese deployment of Koreans in their war efforts during the Pacific War from the 1930s to 1945. Historiography has already established that the Japanese military forces started deploying Koreans who supposedly volunteered to serve in the Japanese Army in 1938 before the conscription system began in 1944 and 1945. With more than 214,000 Koreans serving in the Japanese Army and Navy in 1938 plus 150,000 Korean civilians deployed in Japanese Imperial Forces from 1938 to 1945, Korea proved itself to be “Japan’s largest formal colony and by far the most significant nonmetropolitan source of civilian and military labor.”³ During the five years between 1938 and 1943, approximately 800,000 Koreans were deployed under the Japanese Army Special Volunteer System (陸軍特別志願兵制渡) even before the conscription system began in 1944.⁴

However, much less attention has been given to Korean involvement in the Japanese military in the pre-Colonial period before 1910. This book aims to push back the dates of the Japanese engagement of Korean nationals in their imperial projects, military and commercial, to the pre-annexation days of the early 1900s—decades before the 1930s and 1940s. It will present historical research results on whether, why, and how these Koreans became involved in the Japanese military forces in pre-colonial times.

The main objectives of this book are to 1) provide the body of evidence which reveals the presence of Korean nationals in the Japanese military during the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905, years before the formal annexation of Korea by Japan and decades earlier than the historiography has established; 2) analyze the new pieces of evidence of Koreans’ presence not only on the Japanese but also on the Russian side of the war; and 3) investigate why and how these Koreans came to settle in the Russian Far East and Manchuria and formed transnational diasporas at the end of the Yi Dynasty of Korea, resulting in their involvement in the Japanese and the Russian military forces led by their new sense of allegiance.

Although this book focuses primarily on Korean involvement in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, it will span three chronological periods:

1. Between the 1860s and the early 1900s for the migration and settlement of Korean transnationals in the Russian Far East and Manchuria in the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War which ended with Japan’s victory in 1895;
2. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905;
3. The beginning of the Japanese colonial rule of Korea between 1906 and 1920.

The geopolitical environment of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Asia was ripe with Japan’s imperialistic aggression toward Korea to publicly deny control of Korea by China, Russia, or any other powers of the world. Just as aggressive were the capitalistic exploitations by western powers, such as England, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States, regarding Korea’s rich natural resources—hitherto untapped. And the Yi Dynasty of Korea (1392–1910) was about to collapse in its futile attempts to secure sovereignty, as well as achieve modernity and westernization, due to internal factionalism and a weak government.

Both the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War were fought on Korean soil and won by Japan, leading to utter devastation of farmland and the inundation of Korea by troops, army followers, and early migrant settlers of Japan. Successful removal of all foreign superpowers from the Korean peninsula, engineered by Japanese political machines and strong military forces by 1905, contributed to the success of Japan’s imperialism and the collapse of Korea’s independent monarchy. Korea’s poor and powerless were left to their own devices to survive in this tumultuous era of their country’s history.

This book is a study of Korean transnational diasporas in Russia and Manchuria, formed by their desire for better lives and struggle for survival during a time of conflicts and dissatisfaction. Transnationalism is a phenomenon in which subjects of one nation cross over political boundaries into another. While they have left their old home, adjusting to the new land, transnationals remain committed to their original homeland and continue to be involved in its affairs from overseas or across borders. Members of transnational diasporas typically maintain emotional and social ties with members of the old homeland as well as taking active roles in the social/personal networks through socio-economic and political connections across borders while living and engaging themselves as members of their new homeland.

In these Koreans’ case, their main motive in crossing the borders was the desire for better working and living conditions which their home country could not provide. Once they crossed over, they had to work even harder, farming or laboring in the vast uncultivated lands of the Russian Far East (RFE) and Manchuria. As soon as they could afford it, they constructed homes in the old Korean style, forming villages of families and fellow migrants into a diaspora.

As defined by scholars such as Rogers Brubaker, a diaspora is formed by members of an ethnic group who originated from the same place but dispersed due to traumatic conditions. The Korean diasporas in the RFE and Manchuria met three classic aspects of diaspora: 1) “dispersion in space” by crossing over state borders; 2) “orientation to a homeland” maintaining their “collective memory” of their homeland to which they or their descendants long to return; and 3) boundary maintenance by “preservation of a distinctive identity vis-à-vis the host society” by maintaining their Korean customs and cultures as well as languages.⁵

Some of these Korean transnationals who gained financial stability and citizenship in their adopted homelands became involved in their old homeland’s affairs beyond the borders. Some joined the Righteous Armies on the Manchurian and Russian sides and frequently crossed the borders down to Korea to fight the Japanese army and police after Korea became a protectorate of Japan in 1905. When Koreans in the RFE and Manchuria became more “collectively committed to the restoration of the homeland and to its safety and prosperity” after the Russo-Japanese War, they formed truly transnational diasporas, ever more so than at the beginning.⁶

In this book, the author defines a transnational diaspora as a population of migrants with a diasporic identity of exile and multiple commitments, allegiances, engagements, and loyalties toward the land of origin and the new host countries. What would have pushed Korean people—despite their long history as a nation—to cross the northern borders over the rivers and mountain ranges with their possessions on their backs in the late nineteenth century? Who were these people? How did they maintain their national identity in their new lives in the transnational diasporas with a new set of challenges? How did they perceive and deal with the boundaries of their new lives—geographical and cultural, “permeable or soft in certain respects and rigid” in others—and maintain “language, eating habits, and marriage taboos” of the old?⁷ These questions are the main focus of this book.

Research findings in the primary sources of multilingual and multinational do...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Maps
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Conventions
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Koreans in the Russian Far East and Manchuria
• 3 Koreans in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905
• 4 Korean Transnationals as Stateless People, 1906–1920
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index