Korean immigrants in the history of the Jewish autonomous region

The successful Amur rafting and signing of the Aigun and Beijing treaties with the Qing Empire ensured the Russian Far Eastern lands return in the middle of the XIX century. Subsequently, more than a dozen new settlements appeared on the left bank of the Amur River, including the future Jewish Autonomous region area. Some of them were founded by Koreans, whose exodus to Russia began in 1864. At the same time, Koreans voluntarily changed their religion from Buddhism to Orthodoxy. Because of the lack of land plots for them in the south of Primorye, the Russian government allowed the new Russians to partially relocate to other areas in the Far East, including the Amur lands. About five hundred people settled on the lands assigned to them by the Catherine-Nikolsky Cossack district at the confluence of the Samara River with the Amur. Here, in 1871, they founded their settlement. One of their villages, formed in 1871, was the village of Blagoslavennoye, named by the Koreans themselves in honor of the Christian blessing. Subsequently, Korean settlements appeared at In station, the village of Tikhonkaya. There were small Korean schools opening there. Korean peasants more than enough provided the regional markets with vegetables and other agricultural products. The black days in the history of the Korean inhabitants of the Far East came in September 1937, when the Korean population was resettled in Kazakhstan.