ABSTRACT
As we have seen in the previous chapter, there were not supposed to be any Koreans in the RFE following their forced relocation to Central Asia by the Soviet authorities in 1937. However, as James C. Scott (1998) convincingly argues, grand designs by states (such as the mass relocation of populations and large-scale development projects) often do not fully achieve their aims: there are always holes, gaps, and unexpected outcomes due to local practices and human nature. After their forcible relocation to Central Asia, there was a brief period when Koreans were to all intents and purposes absent from the RFE, 1 but they soon began to reappear due to migration from North Korea following Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonialism in 1945 and from Central Asia following Stalin’s death in 1953.
