Korean Diaspora and (Post) Socialist Modernization in Russia and China

Abstract

Russia and China provide two opposite variations of Korean Diaspora ethnic boundaries formation within the context of socialist modernization. Socialist revolutions in Russia and China promised that taking power from the upper classes or the redistribution of wealth inside the national community would solve the problem of unequal distribution of wealth in society, which turned ethnic/national culture into a form of class struggle between labor and capital. Politicization of ethnicity demanded provision of Korean minority with its own national territory where they could enjoy a certain degree of autonomy, national schools, and national elites as a tool of dictatorship of the proletariat. Unlike China, Soviet/Russian government refused to provide territory to ethnic Koreans that defined further development. Logic of politicized Soviet/Russian Korean ethnicity constantly pressures to establish autonomy and at the same time resist its establishment. It meant that ethnic boundaries of Chinese Korean diaspora were reaction to different trends of political power in Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, Soviet/Russian Korean Diaspora developed in similar way but without politically guaranteed relation to certain territory that forced them to spread their activities in different regions all over the country.