There is a close resemblance between Kazakhstan and China. Kazakhstan is a multi-ethnic country with a large land mass and a communist past. And it has ethnic Koreans living there, as does China. Ethnic Koreans in Kazakhstan are called "Koryo-saram" and there are about 550,000 ethnic Koreans around Central Asia and Russia, descendants of emigrants to the Maritime Province of Siberia (southeast part of Siberia near the East Sea) for survival from the unusually bad harvest in the 1860s and the independence movement of Korea from Japan after the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905.

 According to the Overseas Koreans Foundation's statistics in 2015, there are 107,613 ethnic Koreans in Kazakhstan, which makes it the ninth largest Korean diaspora population in the world. For your information, the top three countries of Korean emigrants are situated in Russia and Central Asia (Uzbekistan is at 5th, Russia at 6th and Kazakhstan at 9th).

 Our ancestors headed to the Maritime Province of Siberia and Vladivostok, Russia and were again sent and settled in a region that's over 6,000km away from Korea (7-hour flight) – but, the question surely is, how did that happen? The reason is the Deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union by Stalin. Between September and December 1937, 171,781 Koreans in the Maritime Province of Siberia were forced to move to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. In the 1920s, the number of Korean migrants increased to about 25% of the rural population of Vladivostok, and the Soviet Union feared that Koreans would spy against the Russians for Japaneses. In fact, the Soviet Union shot and killed 2,500 Korean intellectuals and leaders between 1935 and 1937 under suspicion of Japanese espionage. It forced Koreans to move as part of its ethnic cleansing.

 Most people think of Japanese military sexual slavery (known as 'comfort women') and Korean independence activists when we think of the period of Japanese colonial rule, which is the darkest time in the Korean history, but Koryo-saram is another deep wound left in the psyche of modern-day Korea.

 Graphic descriptions of fleeing and parting from family by those who survived from the deportation offer us a hint of the struggle that our ancestors went through for their lives after the Korean War.

 Read his last sentence again: it was only the deep lament and un-avenged injustice that kept Korean deportees alive. Bitter as it may feel, it is true that the deep lament and un-avenged injustice (han in Korean) is what drove Koreans through all the difficulties they faced in modern history. They were thrown out, completely destitute, but sowed seeds across Central Asia and have held their own in the land imbued with the deep lament and un-avenged injustice of their ancestors to this day.

 I was only elementary student when I lived in Kazakhstan and I don't remember much about the place. Only a shallow image of the people remains. People who share the same root as I. This column indeed gave me a chance to look back and learn about Koryo-saram and the modern history of Korea. A Korean village now called Shinhanchon in Vladivostok, Russia was home to many Korean independence fighters. There were about 380 Korean schools in the Maritime Province of Siberia, 13 Korean magazines and newspapers during the Japanese colonial era. Not to forget, Hong Beomdo, the Korean independence activist leading Korean independence army as a commander-in-chief was deported and died in Kzyl-Orda, Kazakhstan. If you want to learn more about the story of Koryo-saram, please visit the websites below:

 And if you have a chance to go to Shanghai for travel or a business trip, I'd recommend a visit to the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea. In the next column, I will bring something a little less serious; the effort of Koryo-saram to inherit Korean culture and the Kazakhstan makeup market. Thank you.