Day Six

Still on the boat. It turns out that a lot of these Asian Russian nationals are Koreans. I've been told that there were many Korean people living on Sakhalin island as Japanese laborers (read: slaves) during the occupation of Korea and the territorial tug-of-war between the Russian and Japanese empires in the early twentieth century. When the Russians took the island after the second world war, many of the Korean people remained and became Russian citizens.

This was explained to me by Yulia (not the same person as Julia, from last time). Yulia is a twenty-two year-old Korean-Russian who is travelling on the boat with me. Her grandmother was a member of the first generation of Korean laborers sent to Salakhin by the Japanese. Not suprisingly, Yulia now identifies more strongly with her Russian heritage than with her Korean background, although she has visited Korean seven times in the past twenty years.

Yulia, by the way, is quad-lingual (a real word?) and works for a French bank operating in Vladivostok. She hopes to immigrate to America in the near future.

The other Asian-Russian people here are of Kzech and Mongolian ancestory. Yulia supposes that the Korean authorities recently carried out oa sweep of illegal workers, since so many of the passengers are carrying huge amounts of baggage.

Interesting woman, that one.

Anyhow, the ferry took about 100 passangers (plus lots of cargo containers) to a little town called Zarubino. Everyone got off there and took a bus to Vladivostok; only Julia, myself and a quiet young Russian man remain on the boat for the last leg of the journey. We should be arriving there in about four hours.

It's really spooky here with no one around.

5:22 pm, Dong chun ferry.

Scorecard:

3:00 pm ferry, Sokcho to Vladivostok, 30 hours