A number of Koryo-saram became significant Korean independence activists, such as Hong Beom-do and Chŏng Sangjin.

A significant number of Koryo-saram have either moved temporarily or permanently to South Korea for economic or cultural reasons.

The Russo-Ukrainian War, especially the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, has motivated several thousand Korean Ukrainians to move to South Korea for safety.

They arrived when Sakhalin was partially under Japanese rule, and were never subjected to the forced deportation to Central Asia.

[12] The term by which they refer to themselves is composed of two Korean words: "Koryo", a historical name for Korea, and "saram", meaning "person" or "people".

A small population of wealthy elite owned the farmlands in the country, and poor peasants found it difficult to survive.

Koreans leaving the country in this period were obliged to move toward Russia, as the border with China was sealed by the Qing Dynasty.

[16] However, the first Koreans in the Russian Empire, 761 families totalling 5,310 people, had actually migrated to Qing territory; the land they had settled on was ceded to Russia by the Convention of Peking in 1860.

According to Russian sources early as 1863, 13 Korean households were recorded in Posyet, near Bay of Novgorod.

[20] Korean leaders in Vladivostok's Sinhanch'on (literally, "New Korean Village") neighbourhood also provided support to the independence movement, making it a centre for nationalist activities, including arms supply; the Japanese attacked it on 4 April 1920, leaving hundreds dead.

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.

[20] In 1937, facing reports from the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) that there were possibilities that Japanese would have infiltrate 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.

[26] Nonetheless, the deportees cooperated to build irrigation works and start rice farms; within three years, they had recovered their original standard of living.

Some Koryo-saram, including Pak Chang-ok, became key figures in that government, where they formed a faction of Soviet Koreans.

[30] However, in the mid-1950s, Kim Il Sung purged many Soviet-aligned Korean people, which led to the expulsion of a number of Koryo-saram from the North.

[36] The largest concentrations can be found in Kharkiv, Kyiv, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Cherkasy, Lviv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Dnipro, Zaporizhia and Crimea.

[37][38] Some of the most famous Korean-Ukrainians are Vitalii Kim, current governor of Mykolaiv Oblast, Pavlo Lee, actor killed in Russo-Ukrainian war, and Oleksandr Sin, former mayor of Zaporizhzhia.

South Korea never had any programme to promote return migration of their diaspora in Central Asia, unlike Germany.

Mass settlement of Koreans in the country began during the late 1950s and early 1960s, after the loosening of restrictions on their freedom of movement which had previously kept them confined to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

Like Koreans in other parts of Central Asia, they generally possessed higher incomes compared to members of other ethnic groups.

However, with the May 1992 onset of civil war in Tajikistan, many fled the country; by 1996, their population had fallen by over half to 6,300 people.

[46] Violence continued even after the end of the civil war; in 2000, suspected Hizb ut-Tahrir members exploded a bomb in a Korean Christian church in Dushanbe, killing 9 and wounding 30.

They formed four main groups: those sent for intelligence work during the Japanese colonial period, the Red Army personnel who arrived in 1945–1946, civilian advisors and teachers who arrived in the northern half of the peninsula in 1946–1948 and individuals who repatriated from the Soviet Union to North Korea for personal reasons.

[65] The cuisine of the Koryo-saram is closest to that of the Hamgyong provinces in North Korea and is dominated by meat soups and salty side dishes.

[citation needed] Many Korean surnames, when Cyrillized, are spelled and pronounced slightly differently from the romanisations used in the U.S. and the resulting common pronunciations, as can be seen in the table at right.

[71] The introduction of international passports by newly independent CIS countries, resulted in further differences in pronunciation as Korean surnames had to be transliterated from Cyrillic into Latin.

In addition to a surname, Koreans also use clan names (known as bongwan in Korea and pronounced as пой among Koryo-saram) denoting the place of origin.

Over time, as the proportion of Christians increased, Koreans were given, in accordance with the tradition of the Russian Orthodox Church, names from the general list of revered saints.

This contrasts with other more rural minority groups such as the Dungan, who have maintained a higher level of proficiency in their ethnic language.

[76][77] Also in Ushtobe, the Karatal Korean History Center has a museum with authentic houses and historical materials on display.