Ethnic minorites are very rare in North Korea, which prides itself on its homogeneity. However, some ethnic in the DPRK are set apart, due to their time (or their ancestors’ time) spent in foreign countries before moving back.

This is part two in Prof. Andrei Lankov’s three-part series on these communities. For part one, on Japanese-Koreans in the DPRK, click here. 

While the Soviet Union was home to one of the world’s largest ethnic Korean communities –  some 450,000 strong in 1989 – it produced a relatively small number of repatriates to North Korea – less than 10,000, presumably. Most