When did the Soviet government order the forced removal of ethnic Koreans from the Russian Far East?
The Soviet government ordered the forced removal of 171,781 ethnic Koreans from the Russian Far East in October 1937. This operation known as the Deportation of Koreans marked the first time the state decided to uproot a people solely because of their ethnicity and proximity to a perceived foreign threat. Families were given only hours to pack their belongings before being loaded onto cattle cars and sent to the vast steppes of Central Asia.