Violinist Anton Kang plays Arirang with Kwanju Koryeoin Children's group

[soryang]

These are Russian Koreans who have returned to South Korea to live from the former southern Soviet states to which their ancestors were deported during the Stalinist period. In this recently uploaded video Anton Kang who plays with the Seoul Orchestra entertains fellow "Koryeo In" living in South Korea by performing the classic Korean folk song with their children. He can speak to their elders in either Russian or with more difficulty in Korean as many parents and grandparents were unable to learn or speak Korean as a consequence of Russian ethnic oppression during the Soviet period.

There are many versions of the folk song Arirang, this version Dokdo Arirang is currently most popular and functions as a defacto national song.

From Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koryo-saram

Prior to the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway, Koreans outnumbered Russians in the Russian Far East; the local governors encouraged them to naturalize....

The 1937 Census showed 168,259 Koreans in the Soviet Union. However, officials in the Russian Far East viewed the Koreans' ethnic and family ties to the Japanese Empire with suspicion, which would soon set the stage for the deportation of the whole population.[16]...

In 1937, facing reports from the NKVD that the Japanese had infiltrated the Russian Far East by means of ethnic Korean spies, Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov signed Resolution 1428-326 ss, "On the Exile of the Korean Population from border Raions of the Far East Kray", on 21 August.[20] According to the report of Nikolai Yezhov, 36,442 Korean families totalling 171,781 persons were deported by 25 October.[21] The deported Koreans faced difficult conditions in Central Asia.... Estimates based on population statistics suggest that 40,000 deported Koreans died in 1937 and 1938 for these reasons.[22] However, the deportees cooperated to build irrigation works and start rice farms; within three years, they had recovered their original standard of living.

[FM123]

1. From the music, to the story - my eyes are welling up in tears...

[soryang]

2. That's the way I felt too.

I was hoping this would come across. It's an obscure period of period of hardship that most hadn't heard of. One of the scripts on the screen said something to the effect, that the musician hoped the performance would soothe the years of hardship experienced.