Korean Carrots: The Heartbreaking Story of Soviet Kimchi

Morkovcha (“Korean carrots”) is a shredded carrot salad with garlic, oil, vinegar and chili, found in every deli counter and fridge across the post-Soviet world — but nowhere in Korea. The video traces how this paradox came to be: it is not a recipe story but a story of famine, empire, deportation, and culinary adaptation. The dish is the poster child of Soviet Korean food, invented by Koreans who were never allowed to keep cooking the food they came from.

Key Points

• Korean carrots (morkovcha) is a post-Soviet staple that does not exist in Korea itself.
• From the late 19th century, Koreans fleeing famine and then Japanese colonial rule (Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910) settled in the Russian Far East; by the 1920s–30s over 150,000 lived around Vladivostok, calling themselves Koryo-saram (“Korean people”).
• The community thrived there — farms, schools, theaters, newspapers, even semi-autonomous districts — until Stalin, suspecting them of being Japanese spies with no evidence, signed Resolution 1428-326-CC in 1937: the first wholesale deportation of an entire ethnic group in Soviet history.
• Roughly 170,000 people were crammed into cattle cars for journeys of up to 40 days to Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan), 6,400 km away; the trains became known as “ghost trains” because so many died en route — up to a third — and bodies were dumped along the tracks since Korean tradition held that the unburied dead wander the earth.
• Another quarter or so died in the first years from starvation and disease; survival was possible largely because local Kazakh and Uzbek families shared what little they had.
• The deportees had brought seeds from home (chili, beans, corn, Korean chives), but Central Asia’s dry climate would not grow the cabbage and daikon needed for kimchi. Carrots, however, grew fine.
• Adapting the Korean technique of muche (seasoned shredded radish) to carrots — dropping the seafood, leaning on garlic, oil, vinegar, chili, later cumin, coriander and sesame — they created a new dish: not fully Korean, not fully Central Asian, not really Soviet. “A carrot salad with Korean logic.”
• By the 1970s morkovcha had spread from Korean communities to markets, canteens and millions of refrigerators across the USSR.
• The Koryo-saram went on to build the most productive collective farms in the Soviet Union, built advanced irrigation for rice, and dozens received the Hero of Socialist Labor award. Their children went to university at double the Soviet average and became doctors, scientists, generals and artists — including Viktor Tsoi (frontman of Kino, the “Beatles of late Soviet rock”) and Tatyana Kim, founder of Wildberries, one of Russia’s richest women.
• Their food spread with them: Korean-style pickled cabbage, garlicky pickled salads, and the cold noodle salad funchosa all come from Koryo-saram roots, but morkovcha reigns supreme.
• The closing message: morkovcha is not a “fake Korean salad” but a historic deportation recipe — “what kimchi becomes when making kimchi is impossible. History, shredded and seasoned.”

Detailed Summary

Origins: Koreans in the Russian Far East

Late 19th-century Korea was devastated by famine and poverty; Japan’s 1910 annexation added political violence. Koreans crossed the Tumen River into the Russian Far East, which offered land, opportunity and initially welcoming policies. By the 1920s–30s, over 150,000 Koryo-saram lived around Vladivostok and in Primorsky Krai, building a flourishing community — successful farms, schools, theaters, newspapers, and semi-autonomous government districts — first under Imperial Russia, then as Soviet citizens.

The 1937 deportation

Stalin’s paranoia, combined with Korea being a colony of Japan (the Soviet Union’s mortal enemy), led him to decide with no evidence that the Koreans were a network of Japanese spies. Resolution 1428-326-CC ordered the deportation of every single Korean. It was the first time in Soviet history an entire ethnic group was deported at once. People had about 30 minutes to pack and were loaded into cattle cars — no toilets, no heating — bound not for Korea but for the deserts of Central Asia, 6,400 km away. Journeys took up to 40 days; many died of cold, starvation and disease, their bodies dumped at stations or from moving trains. The “ghost trains” delivered around 170,000 people, of whom up to a third did not survive.

Survival and reinvention in Central Asia

Arriving in late autumn on empty steppe with no housing or infrastructure, people dug earth houses or crammed into abandoned buildings. Disease and starvation killed up to another quarter in the first years; local Kazakh and Uzbek families sharing food and shelter made the difference. The seeds the deportees had smuggled from home could not produce kimchi’s cabbage and daikon in the arid climate — but carrots thrived. Applying the Korean seasoning technique for shredded radish (muche) to carrots, and substituting garlic, oil, vinegar and chili for unavailable seafood, the community invented morkovcha out of longing for the taste of home, not culinary experimentation. Variants added cumin, coriander, sesame seeds. Within a few years the salad spread across Central Asia and, by the 1970s, the entire USSR.

Legacy

Despite everything, the Koryo-saram became “Soviet legends”: they built irrigation systems and ran the most productive collective farms in the Union; after Stalin’s death, dozens received the Hero of Socialist Labor medal. The next generation went to university at double the Soviet average and produced famous figures like Viktor Tsoi and Tatyana Kim. Their cuisine quietly conquered the post-Soviet world, with morkovcha as its most famous dish. The video ends with the presenter’s own tested morkovcha recipe, linked in the description, because “a dish born from tragedy deserves to be delicious.”

(Note: the video contains sponsored segments for Saily, an eSIM app.)