Valery Yankovsky

Born in the Russian Far East, his family moved to what is now North Korea, where he spent many years in the Gulags.

Yankovksy was born in the Vladivostok region to Yuri ("George", leading to the patronymic middle name Georgevich or Yurevich and corresponding initials G., I. or Y.)

The Japanese police who knew his sharpshooting and hunting skills once showed him a photograph of a rebel hiding in the local forests and offered him a bounty of 10000 yen for his head.

Valery declined due to sympathies with the locals and many years later learned that this target had been Kim Il Sung.

In 1944, he moved to Manchuria and from 1945 he worked in the Soviet Army serving as a translator with knowledge of Japanese, Korean, and Russian.

In 1986, under Gorbachev's relaxation of rules, he was allowed to visit Canada and he met his first wife Irma and his son, then aged forty.