Ayan Korean Autonomous Oblast (Cherry, Plum, and Chrysanthemum)

Ayano-Korean Autonomous Oblast (Russian: Аяно-Корейский автонoмная oбласть Ayano-Koreyskiy avtonomnaya oblast Korean: 아얀에 고려죽 자치주 Ayan-e Goryeojuk Jachiju) is a federal subject of Russia (an autonomous oblast) located in Russian Far East. It is being bordered with Magadan Oblast in the north, with the Sakha Republic in the west, with Khabarovsk Krai in the south, and with the Sea of Okhotsk in the east. Its administrative center is Ayan.

History
The oblast created in 1930 as the part of Soviet policy of national delimitation. By 1926, Koreans represented more than a quarter of the rural population of the Vladivostok region. Soviet official policy toward national minorities demanded the formation of a Korean autonomous territory for the large Korean community in the Russian Far East. The option of establishing a Korean national territory in the Far East was seriously debated in Moscow, but finally adopted in 1930.

The first state-sponsored Korean settlements were established in Ayan, a little port on the bay of the Sea of Okhotsk in 1928. The Soviet policy of korenizatsiya (indigenisation) resulted in the creation of 39 Korean village soviets in at the area of Ayan. By decree of the Soviet government, Ayano-Korean Autonomous Oblast was officially formed on December 10, 1930 by combining the areas of Ayan and Nelkan

In the 1930s, the Soviet government began forming state and collective farms and opened local Korean-language schools and hospitals intended for local Korean settlers. Ayan also became the centre of Korean Communist Party activities between 1930s and 1940s.

After Japan established an extensive economic cooperation with the Soviet Union in 1934, Ayan became one of important ports in the Russian Far East and Koreans grew significantly as a majority in Ayan. Following the World War II, Kuomintang Chinese attempt to retake Vladivostok forced the Soviet government to deport local Korean minorities to the Ayano-Korean Autonomous Oblast.

Following the end of World War II, Korea was inaugurated as the fully sovereign, independence nation from Japan in 1949. About 700 Soviet Koreans returned to Korean Peninsula between 1949 and 1955. But this migration gradually banned by the Soviet following Katobushi Toshio rise on power as the new leader of Japan, after death of Nagayama Yoshida. As the President of Japan, Katobushi Toshio adopted the policy of "Reconstruction and Opening", where Japan was opening a way for an economic cooperation with the United States and signaled for a renewed interest for Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

The Soviet government irritated by Japan's step toward economic liberalization and its friendly stance toward the Western Bloc. After Yugoslavia, the former Soviet ally, stepped out from the Eastern Bloc in 1950s, the Soviet Union was afraid Japan, which was not even a communist nation, will entered the Western Bloc and being a threat that directly pointed toward the Soviet power in the Russian Far East. As Korea making part of the Japan's sphere of influences, Koreans in Ayano-Korean Autonomous Oblast forbade to leave the oblast by the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin and his successors, Nikita Khrushchev.

The ban lifted after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the immigration of Soviet Koreans to the Republic of Korea followed. Although the number of Korean population in the oblast decreased, there is a recent attempt by the Russian government to revive the importance of Korean culture in Ayano-Korean Autonomous Oblast.