Walden Korea signs Agreement with Koryo People's Cultural Center, Incheon, Korea
Walden Korea signed a business agreement with the Korea Support Center/ Koryo People's Cultural Center <Beyond Incheon> in Hambak Village, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, Korea, with the view toward promoting the history of Primorsky, Manchuria, and the Korean Peninsula to the world. Hambak Village is Korea's largest single ethnric village, where 7,000 Goryeo (Koryo) people live together as a community.
The term "Goryeo people" refers to the Korean people living in the entire Union of Independent States (Uzbekistan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, etc.) after the collapse of the former Soviet Union.
In the spring of 2019, which marked the 100th anniversary of the March 1st Independence Movement and the establishment of the Korean Provisional Government, President Moon Jae-In visited Uzbekistan and said, "The first generation of Goryeo people are all independence fighters and patriots:'
In 1863, the Korean people who crossed the Tumen River and moved to Primorsky Land formed a Korean village, which became the main stage of the independence movement, including, later on, the base of the Korean Liberation Army. The flames ofindependence activists, such as the Maritime Movement, the April disaster, and the Goryeo Revolutionary Armed Forces, were extinguished in 1937by the tragedy of forced migration to Central Asia. Tens of thousands of Goryeo people died in the Siberian field. Abandoned in the middle of Central Asia, the Goryeo people pioneered in cultivating the barren land, settled collective farms, and labored like heroes, forming a community and fostering the next generation. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, they moved to various parts of Eurasia and ultimately entered South Korea in 2007.
However, although the Goryeo people are descendants of independence fighters, they are not recognized as Koreans and are not receiving proper educational benefits. Ethnric Koreans tribe (Josun-jok) from China speak Korean fluently, and have widely entered the Korean workforce. But most Goryeo people, due to their lack of fluency in Korean, have no choice but to live within the confines of their residential towns such as Hambak Village. After 1945, the Soviet Union banned the teaching of Korean language.
Many of the Goryeo people who had resettled in South Korea were highly-educated professionals in their former countries, such as doctors and professors. But when they came to Korea, most of the jobs available to them were work for minimum wage.
Walden Korea will start a modern and contemporary Korean history trip, bringing second generation Korean students and U.S. residents to South Korea. In the village of the Goryeo people, visitors from the U.S. will meet the descendants of the anti-Japanese movement and learn more about the Korean diaspora. They will also visit the truce line in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and learn about North-South relations. Finally, they will also learn about the Jeju 4.3 Massacre. ■
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