[2] Afanasy Ivanovich Seredin-Sabatin, an architect from a family of Swiss origin, is the earliest attested Russian in Korea.

Russia was influential in Korean politics of the era; after the assassination of Empress Myeongseong in 1895, Emperor Gojong took refuge at the Russian legation.

Approximately half obtained passage to Shanghai, but those who had not taken valuables with them were forced to stay in Wonsan for the winter.

[8] In early 1923, the refugees dispersed; they continued on to Harbin, where a significant community of Russians resided, and Latin America.

[10] George Yankovsky, the grandson of a Polish noble exiled to Siberia, also maintained a resort in Chongjin which was popular among the Russian communities of East Asia, but virtually unknown to other westerners.

Roughly 50,000 people from post-Soviet states were estimated to live in the area in 2004, down from 70,000 several years previously due to deportations of illegal immigrants.

Approximately 200 live in the city permanently, with several hundred more on short-term visas, along with a large transient population of sailors.

This was resolved on 25 December 1955, after the Christmas Divine Liturgy, the General Assembly of the Orthodox Community of South Korea unanimously requested jurisdiction under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which accepted.

In 1995, during his historic first official visit to South Korea, Bartholomew, the Ecumenical Patriarch, laid the foundation stone of the chapel of Saint Maximus the Greek.