Burnt by the Sun: The Koreans of the Russian Far East

Zachary M. Adamz of University of Texas at Austin reviews Burnt by the Sun, by Jon K. Chang. Dr. Jon K. Chang’s examines the history of the first Korean diaspora in a Western society during the highly tense geopolitical atmosphere of the Soviet Union in the late 1930s. Demonstrating that the Koreans of the Russian Far East were continually viewed as a problematic and maligned nationality (ethnic community) during the Tsarist and Soviet periods. Arguing that Tsarist influences and the various forms of Russian nationalism(s) and worldviews blinded the Stalinist regime from seeing the Koreans as loyal Soviet citizens. Instead, these influences portrayed them as a colonizing element (labor force) with unknown and unknowable political loyalties.

Read the book review at https://doi.org/10.1111/imre.12329