Power relations and education of the Korean minority in the Japanese Karafuto and Soviet/Russian Sakhalin

Jae Hyung PARK, Irina BALITSKAYA

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapters

Abstract

This chapter is on the Korean diaspora community in the Japanese Karafuto and Soviet-Russian Sakhalin Island. Using historiography, it examines the vicissitudes of Korean ethnic minority people who were mostly from the Southern part of the Joseon kingdom. They were forced to stay in the Karafuto/Sakhalin Island, first as conscripts and then cheap labor for mining and fishery. They were subjects of two imperial powers but without a passport, hence, making their repatriation impossible. Under strict and pragmatic ethnic language policies, they suffered periodic ban or closure of “Korean schools” and manipulation of the education curriculum. Thus, it is argued, the Koreans became victims of two imperial systems of difference (ruler-ruled) and exploitation without being allowed to return to their motherland during the Japanese colonial rule of Korea (1910–1945), as well as after the handover of the Southern territory to the Soviet Union as a result of Japanese defeat in the World War II and continued all the way to 1986 when they were allowed to be repatriated under the political slogans of Perestroika and Glasnost (reformation and openness) that the Soviet Union was preoccupied with. Copyright © 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationEducation, ethnicity and equity in the multilingual Asian context
EditorsJan GUBE, Fang GAO
Place of PublicationSingapore
PublisherSpringer
Pages255-273
ISBN (Electronic)9789811331251
ISBN (Print)9789811331244
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

Citation

Park, J., & Balitskaya, I. (2019). Power relations and education of the Korean minority in the Japanese Karafuto and Soviet/Russian Sakhalin. In J. Gube & F. Gao (Eds.), Education, ethnicity and equity in the multilingual Asian context (pp. 255-273). Singapore: Springer.

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