Meet the Korean artists of Kazakhstan

A painting by a Korean artist at the Art Museum named after Abylkhan Kasteyev in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Photo by the author, used with permission.

Starting in 1937, nearly 175,000 Koreans were forcibly deported from the Far Eastern Territory of the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin. Descendants of the deported Koreans still live in Central Asia and are determined to make their history and presence known through art and by sharing their culture.

Their self-designation is Koryo-saram, a term used to describe ethnic Koreans of the Soviet Union. Their ancestors were deported under Stalin's decree “On the eviction of the Korean population from the border regions of the Far Eastern Territory.” At the time, Central Asia was part of the Soviet Union.

The decision to deport the Koreans was made to prevent their possible cooperation with Japan, with which the Soviet Union had hostile relations at the time. In September 1937, a rapid operation began, and more than 100,000 people, declared “unreliable,” were forcibly resettled to sparsely populated regions of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Koreans became one of the first peoples of the Soviet Union subjected to mass deportation.

Here is a YouTube video about the deportation of Koreans.

In Kazakhstan alone, there are over 100,000 local Koreans today. They are actively involved in the cultural and social life of the country. The country’s largest city and cultural capital, Almaty, is home to the Republican State Academic Korean Musical Comedy Theatre, the first national Korean theatre in the world. It also hosts the Republican Korean newspaper Koryo Ilbo, which is published in three languages: Korean, Kazakh, and Russian.

In addition, the city’s main art museum, named after Abylkhan Kasteyev, houses works by dozens of artists, ethnic Koreans exiled to the country and their descendants, who have become part of the region’s artistic landscape. Because of Central Asia’s isolation from the world during the Soviet era, this group remains little studied outside the Central Asian region and Korea itself.

Global Voices visited this museum with Elizaveta Kim, an art historian and employee of the museum, to explore the archive of Korean art in Kazakhstan and learn more about the most influential Korean artists.

In the following section, Kim talks about Korean artists and introduces their works through a first-person account. Journalist Alexandra Sharopina contributed to the article's edits.

Elivaveta Kim standing in front of her father Mikhail Kim's painting called “Mechta” (Dream) at the museum. Photo by the author, used with permission.

Elizaveta Kim: Shaping the local art scene

The first of the important Korean artists for us was Kim Hyun Nyun (1908–1994). He graduated from the Soviet Academy of Arts in 1937 and was deported to us from Leningrad. When the deportation began, he could not even come home to Vladivostok because he was told that everyone had been evicted and there was no one there anymore.

As our Kazakh artists, for example, Uke Azhiyev, recalled: “As students (in 1937–1938), we loved to run to Kim Hyun Nyun’s exhibitions because he painted large-scale historical works, multi-figure, with complex lighting. We learned from him because we had not seen such serious academic painting in Kazakhstan in those years.”

Kim Hyun Nyun taught at the college, worked in a newspaper publishing house, was involved in theatrical design, and painted pictures. There was a big shortage of professionals, so he was invited everywhere.

Here is a painting by Kim Hyun Nyun:

Photo by the author, used with permission.

My father, Mikhail Kim (1923–1990), was born in Vladivostok and was also deported to Kazakhstan in 1937, in his teenage years. He dreamed of graduating from the Leningrad Academy of Arts, but at that time, Koreans were not allowed to leave the country as “special settlers,” and he remained in Kazakhstan.

My father traveled to many cities in Kazakhstan. He was engaged in monumental painting. His monumental sketches are kept in our museum.

Here is a painting by Mikhail Kim called “Schastye” (Happiness):

Photo by the author, used with permission.

Another prominent artist is Boris Pak (1935–1992). When his family was deported to Kazakhstan, he was only four years old, and his mother died on the way. His father, Pyotr Pak-Ir, was a linguist, orientalist, philosopher, a major scientist, and an amazing personality.

Pak Boris received an excellent education. He graduated from the Leningrad Academy of Arts. He made wonderful illustrations for books and fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen, Wilhelm Hauff, and others.

Here are two book illustrations by Boris Pak:

An illustration is for the book “The Song of Hiawatha” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Photo by the author, used with permission.

An illustration is for the book “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” by Hans Christian Andersen. Photo by the author, used with permission.

People came to exhibitions of Pak's works and could not understand whether they were handmade. Such painstaking and delicate work. A book is a special structure; it has its own tectonics, and he took all of this into account; he calculated everything and was an excellent draftsman.

Konstantin Pak (1924–1987) was deported to Kazakhstan as a child. He worked for a long time in the Korean theater. He designed many performances there. Moreover, for a long time, the Korean and Uyghur theaters were in the same building. Their performances alternated, so Konstantin made decorations for both Korean performances and the Uyghur theater.

Here are two paintings by Konstantin Pak:

A sketch for Hong Din's play “Kim sung-der”. Photo by the author, used with permission.

A costume design for the play “Anarkhan” by D. Asimov and A. Sadyrov. Photo by the author, used with permission.

Continuing the family art tradition

Svyatoslav, Afanasy, and Sergey Kim are the second generation of Korean artists. They were born in Kazakhstan in the 1950s and are nephews of Mikhail Kim.

Svyatoslav Kim (1954–2017) worked in publishing houses for a long time. He has a perfect understanding of the structure of the book. He illustrated many books, was a laureate of various book exhibitions, and was a recognized graphic artist for books.

Here is an illustration by Svyatoslav Kim for the book “Kruglyi god” (All year around):

Photo by the author, used with permission.

Afanasy Kim (1952–1987). Svyatoslav's brother. A wonderful, talented draftsman. Unfortunately, there are no works by him in the collections of our museum.

Sergey Kim (born in 1952). He was very much looked after by Azhiev Uke, who believed in him, saying that he was a watercolorist with a God-given talent. Pavel Zaltsman also believed in him because he felt in him some continuation of the Filonov school.

Sergey is a wonderful watercolorist. There was a period when he painted teenage girls or old men. The middle generation didn't really interest him at the time — only those who were just open to life or those who had life experience.

Here is a painting by Sergey Kim:

‘Portrait of Gali Kopakli.’ Photo by the author, used with permission.

‘Portrait of Gali Kopakli.’ Photo by the author, used with permission.

For example: “Portrait of Gali Kopakli,” which is of a Moldovan girl. Pay attention to the rose at the bottom left. You can't see it right away, but it [is] a kind of color-tuning fork. And such tenderness of the image: all life is ahead, and what is there in life?

Author's note: Although uniting artists by ethnicity is not the most fruitful idea from the point of view of art history, our task in this article was not scientific but journalistic to highlight how modern Kazakh contemporary art was created with the help of different ethnic groups. A separate question is whether there is much “Koreanness” in these works, but there is definitely a lot of “Soviet Kazakhness” here — a lot.

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