Far From Distant Shores

2016

In 1937, more than 172,000 Koreans who had settled in the Russian Far East to escape famine, poverty, and Japanese colonial oppression were forcefully deported to Central Asia under Stalin’s ethnic cleansing. They were deemed politically unreliable on suspicions of Japanese espionage, an accusation that has never been proven. Exiled without notice, 40,000 Koreans died of starvation and illness during the month-long journey in precarious and overcrowded cattle trains and the harsh winters following the relocation. Once in landlocked Central Asia, they were ordered to grow rice in barren lands, far from the distant shores of the Russian east.

The Koryo-saram, as they call themselves, eventually assimilated into Central Asian culture. Their archaic Korean dialect, inevitably mixed with Russian, has almost disappeared. Yet decades of isolation has failed to mar their sense of identity as ethnic Koreans, alongside traditions and rituals still practiced in the Korean peninsula today.

As a Korean descendant born in the USA and raised in Argentina, I felt an affinity with certain aspects of the Koryo-saram’s migration history, their displaced culture and fragmented identity strangely familiar.

Michael Vince Kim is a Korean-American photographer whose work focuses on migration, language, and identity. Raised in Argentina, where he studied Film Directing at Fundación Universidad del Cine, he has a Masters in Linguistics from The University of Edinburgh and a Masters in Documentary Photography from the London College of Communication. He is the recipient of the Magnum ‘30 Under 30’ Award and the Royal Photographic Society’s Postgraduate Bursary.