러시아 학계의 ‘근대 한인의 해외이주’에 관한 연구동향

Pre-revolutionary Russian Historiography of Korea and Korean Migration to Russia

The article considers the pre-revolutionary Russian historiography of Korea, composed of many articles, reports of military and civil officials, diaries of travelers, geographers, missionaries of the orthodox church and entrepreneurs. As regards the data and factual materials on geography, economy, history and culture of Korea, accumulated during the second half of the 19th century about Korea and Koreans Russia was ahead of the western countries which were behind it and first of all, as regards the geography. Interest in Korea was caused by practical needs because in the last third of the 19th century started a mass migration of Koreans to the Maritime province which was under the jurisdiction of Russia in accordance with Beijing and Aigun agreements. It is stated that there are three main directions in the research of Korea and migration of Koreans to the Russian territory: monarchist, liberal-bourgeois and democratic. However, it is more correct to divide all Russian authors into two camps-of those approving the resettlement of Koreans to the Russian Far East and those opposing its “yellow colonization”. It is only natural that in each of these camps there were ardent defenders of the idea of using Koreans and of their becoming russified and passionate opponents preferring the “wild land” but Russian rather than that cultured by Asians. The official attitude of the Russian autocracy to resettlement of Koreans varied depending on the international situation in the Far East and relations between the tzarist Russia and Japan, China and other countries. A number of works by the Russian authors about Korea and Korean settlers contain fundamental conclusions, rich concrete historical materials and they still are of great scientific and practical importance. Russians researchers were among the first in the West to start studying the Korean language and compiling dictionaries. It is time to translate and publish the works in Korean of the Russian authors of the end of the 19th-beginning of the 20th cc. and to make a more detailed historiographical analysis.