Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Russian Far East stretches from Lake Baikal to the Pacific Ocean and covers an area larger than one-third of Russia's total landmass. This region shares land borders with Mongolia, China, and North Korea to the south while maritime boundaries extend toward Japan and the United States across the Bering Strait.
Russians first reached the Pacific coast in 1647 when they established Okhotsk. The Empire consolidated control over this territory during the nineteenth century after annexing parts of Chinese Manchuria between 1858 and 1860.
Joseph Stalin deported over 200,000 Koreans to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan between 1937 and 1939 due to security concerns. Soviet authorities executed community leaders and banned Korean language use for fifteen years while development relied heavily on Gulag labor camps.
The 2021 Census recorded 7.98 million people living within the Far Eastern Federal District. Population has dropped by 14% over the last fifteen years since the Soviet Union dissolved with most residents concentrating in southern areas.
The M58 highway connected this region to the rest of Russia only after completion in 2010. Railways developed better through the Trans-Siberian Railway and Baikal Amur Mainline established in 1984.