Michał Jankowski

Michał Jankowski or Mikhail Ivanovich Yankovsky (September 24, 1842 – October 10, 1912) was a Polish szlachta nobleman who settled in the Russian Far East after serving a sentence in Siberia for participating in the January Uprising of 1863.

He collected specimens of fauna and flora for museums and collectors and many species were named after him including Jankowski's bunting.

Unable to care for the child, he sought a woman, choosing from among several other brides just by examining a set of photographs.

[2] The Sidemi area was a rich wilderness with leopards, tigers and threatened by roving gangs of Honghuzi bandits against whom Jankowski and the other settlers waged war.

In one attack, the wife of his neighbour Captain Heck was killed along with several workers while his son was kidnapped.

The Koreans nicknamed him as "nenuni" or four-eyed for his sharp eyesight, spotting bandits, boars, and beetles.

He collected natural history specimens which he sent to Russian and European museums, earning a good income from them.

She, contrary to the family political stance, joined the communist party where she came to be called as Comrade Galya and took part in protests against the Tsar, following which she had to flee back east to Sidemi and then forced to live in exile for a while in Japan.

She later returned to Sidemi and with her links to the communist party, was the only member of the family that stayed on after the Bolsheviks moved into the area in 1922.

The family then purchased some land near Chongjin and built up an estate called Novina (after their clan name but also meaning new place).

Yuri (now increasingly better known as George) managed this as farm and as a resort which became very successful, attracting many Russian exiles in Korea and their friends.

When the Japanese took over Korea, the family earned a living by supplying fresh meat from the forests and from their farm.

Being sympathetic to the local Koreans, he declined to take it up and many years later he realized that the Japanese target had been none other than Kim Il Sung.

Victoria, noted for wearing earrings made from tiger claws, published a book of her poems.

Yuri's son Arseny (1914–1978) escaped to southern Korea and because he knew Korean, Japanese, Russian and English, he was recruited by the Americans and became a CIA operative who went by the name of Andy Brown.