Abstract

“Koreitsy: Koreans in the Former Soviet Republics, 1863–Present” traces the transnational social history of the Korean diaspora in Eurasia. Employing historical ethnography that combines archival research with oral history, this dissertation examines the evolving, localized sense of identity and belonging among the Koreitsy across multiple generations. While acknowledging the severe disruption of the 1937 Soviet deportation, this research actively decenters state violence to highlight how the community endured displacement and constructed meaningful lives on their own terms. Most scholarship assumes diasporic attachment inherently ties to a national homeland (koguk). This study challenges that paradigm. For early migrants crossing the Tumen River starting in 1863, belonging was anchored in a portable attachment to natal village (kohyang) and ecological continuity. As the diaspora evolved, subsequent generations reorganized their sense of belonging. The community forged new, localized identities across Central Asia by transforming everyday cultural practices—food, song, and women’s domestic labor—into living archives, providing a bottom-up counter-narrative to official Soviet history that reveals stark generational shifts. The dissertation’s two-part structure reflects this trajectory. Part I traces the social and political shifts across Russian imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet rule, moving from the initial replication of northern Korean village life in the Russian Far East, through the 1937 deportation’s severing of those early ecological ties and the introduction of the official Soviet Rodina as a new object of belonging, to the post-Soviet renegotiation of home amid the diaspora’s dispersal across independent states. Part II turns to the everyday, tracing how foodways, music and song, and women’s roles as cultural transmitters sustained and remade Koreitsy identity over time. Ultimately, by chronicling this 160-year journey through both the political and the everyday, this research offers a new model for Diaspora Studies.

Committee Chair

Lori Watt

Committee Members

Anika Walke, Adrienne Edgar; Ji-Eun Lee; Timothy Parsons

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Author's Department

History

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

8-11-2026

Language

English (en)

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Available for download on Monday, August 07, 2028

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