ABOUT
Hills of Arirang
Most documentary features historical facts and figures — however in order to attract mass appeal and success, the film must implement the drama and emotions to create the humanity that anyone can associate to their own history.
It is our hope to feature the personal experiences of Uzbekistani Koreans to narrate the highly tumultuous – yet not so well known – journey of hopeful people in search of a better life, who instead were met with persecution, loss, and hardship. The stories and difficulties of these Koreans span multiple generations and histories, from the initial immigration to Russia starting in the late 19th century to the deportation of all Koreans ordered by the Stalinist Soviet Union to such remote areas as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
The stories are lessons of loss, hardship, and of losing identity, but they are also a lesson of reunion, gratification, and cultural fusion of Korean and Uzbek cultures that thrive in small communities still relatively unknown today to the rest of the world. This documentary aims to encourage the rediscovery of Uzbekistani Koreans and their cultural heritage and emphasizes the importance of a narrative that stretches across multiple wars important in the Korean history. With the unique incorporation of artistic expression through traditional dance (Arirang) and voice, and the facts presented by a third-generation Uzbekistani Korean Victoria Kim, the documentary will not let the struggles of the Uzbekistani Korean community go unnoticed. The documentary will put substance into their past and hope into their future.
Our hope is to premiere the documentary in August 2017 to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Koryo people’s arrival to Uzbekistan. The film will be distributed globally in theaters in addition to colleges and film festivals to create international recognition for a community of international survivors.
HISTORY
In Uzbekistan, there is a population of ethnic Koreans who share a unique and painful past.
In 1937, all ethnic Koreans living in the north of Soviet Russia and originally from the Hamgyong province of Korea were deported to the unpopulated Central Asia. The journey lasted many weeks, often with no food or water for the suffering Koreans. As a result, it cost tens of thousands of Korean lives.
The reason for the deportation began with the Russo-Japanese War. In 1937, the Soviet Union was embroiled into an undeclared war with Japan over Manchuria in the advent of World War II. Due to the physical resemblance of Koreans to the Japanese and the fact that Korea had earlier become a Japanese colony, the Koreans in the Soviet Far East also became suspected traitors and enemies of the people. Therefore, in 1937 Soviet government took the decision to deport all of them to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where all Koreans were forced to work, developing these remote and unpopulated lands into the Soviet Union’s granaries.
Today, Tashkent (the capital of Uzbekistan) is a bustling and lively Central Asian capital with oriental bazaars full of fruits, meats, and spices. It has solid Soviet-time infrastructure and an incredible mix of people. The city is surrounded with cotton fields, grain and rice paddies, and fruit orchards. However, when Soviet Koreans arrived here in 1937, the city was surrounded only with swamps full of wild cane and malaria mosquitos. For the first several years, the Korean deportees were forced to work on those swamplands, drying them and cutting out the cane.
Upon their arrival, they lived in tiny shacks on the swamps which they later turned into arable fields. Until 1953, the year of Joseph Stalin’s death, there had also been restrictions on their movement.
Stalin’s death and the abrupt end of his personality cult, the passport and other restrictions were lifted, and the Koreans slowly became fully-fledged members of the Soviet society.
They had built their houses and bore their children upon the Uzbek land, and slowly and painfully it became their own. They turned it into arable fields and taught the locals all traditional Korean agricultural techniques, especially how to grow rice. This is how Uzbekistan became the USSR’s agricultural pride, with the best Korean rice still used in all most representative Uzbek culinary dishes.
Soviet Koreans also grew cotton and jute. Korean kolkhozes (collective farms) became the most prosperous ones in Soviet Uzbekistan and were even called the “millionaire” kolkhozes. Many Koreans worked hard and received numerous distinctions, medals and honorary awards. This is how they became imprinted in Uzbek society: as honorary, hard-working and very prosperous diaspora.
Some of those Koreans in high military ranks participated in the Korean War shoulder to shoulder with Kim Il Sung. Unfortunately, the same cruel and gruesome fate was waiting for them in North Korea – to become unwanted people again – and many Soviet Koreans from Central Asia were subsequently purged by Kim Il Sung and forever disappeared, leaving only the traces of their names in Soviet military archives…
After almost 80 years since the original deportation, ethnic Koreans have completely assimilated into the Uzbek society. It is completely normal for Uzbekistanis to see Korean faces on the streets, eat Korean food as a part of national Uzbek cuisine, and learn Korean language and culture in the local centers managed by the South Korean government. Yet, very few people actually know all details about the heavy price that Soviet Koreans had to pay in order to gain such a prominent role in Uzbekistan.
FACTS
Korean immigrants first appeared in the Russian Far East in the early 1860s
Mass deportation began in August 1937
Resolution No. 1428-326CC sought to remove Koreans from the Soviet Far East and relocate them to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan
Approx. 172,000 Koreans were deported from the Soviet Far East on cattle trains (with almost half of them sent to Uzbekistan)
40,000 deaths due to poor quality of life (starvation, cold exposure, etc.)
Almost 200,000 ethnic Koreans in Uzbekistan today