접경지대에 남겨진 조선어 - 소비에트 시대 사할린 코리언들의 언어 문제

Abstract

This paper deals with Sakhalin’s Korean community, which primarily consisted of Koreans recruited to work in Sakhalin from Japan’s Korean colony. The paper focuses on their efforts to preserve Korean language as a link to the motherland to which the Soviet authorities did not allow them to return, forcing them instead into the integration in Soviet life. Unlike the Koreans mobilized for the Battle of Okinawa, Sakhalin Koreans were not permitted to return home, owing to the change in Sakhalin’s position from the Soviet-Japanese borderland into a part of Cold War-era border zones between Soviet and US-controlled worlds. Despite that, Koreans were clinging to their language in hope for an eventual repatriation. Soviet authorities allowed them until 1963 to use a national school system managed as an extension of the Soviet ‘indigenization’ policy vis-à-vis Soviet Union’s minorities. As the Soviet-North Korean relations deteriorated after 1960, however, the Sakhalin Korean community developed into a Soviet-North Korean contact zone where Soviet and North Korean authorities competed for Sakhalin Koreans’ loyalty. As part of the contention, Soviet authorities switched the Korean schools into Russian in 1963, forcing Sakhalin Koreans to accelerate the tempo of their linguistic Russification. This process bears semblance to the closing of the Yiddish schools in 1948~50, on the understanding that they could fan up interest in emigration to Israel. However, Koreans’ latent interest in their native tongue and eventual repatriation remained huge. It was demonstrated by explosive growth in Korean education during and after the late 1980s perestroika reforms.