Koreans in the Czech Republic
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 1,780 South Koreans (2009) 144 North Koreans (2008) |
|
| Languages | |
| Korean, Czech | |
| Religion | |
| Predominantly Christianity Minority: Korean Buddhism |
|
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Korean diaspora |
There are small number of Koreans in the Czech Republic, comprising both North and South Koreans.
One early Korean scholar in Czechoslovakia was Han Hŭng-su. Born in 1909, he studied in Vienna, Bern, and Fribourg in the late 1930s and early 1940s before coming to Prague in 1942/3. He stayed there for a few years, translating Korean literature into German and Czech and writing a book and various articles in those languages about the history of Korea. A supporter of communism, he chose Pyongyang as his destination when he returned to the Korean peninsula in the late 1940s, but was purged near the end of the Korean War.
Most North Korean international students in the 1950s studied in either Czechoslovakia or Hungary. In 1955, there were student demonstrations at Charles University in response to the financial assistance and preferential treatment shown to North Korean students. There were about 150 North Korean students in Czechoslovakia in 1989, according to the personal testimony of two among them—both students at a dental college in Prague—who defected to South Korea in February that year. Other sources reported 200. North Korea recalled them all back home after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990.
There was formerly a contingent of nearly four hundred North Koreans working in the Czech Republic, including about ninety women working as seamstresses in Snezka, a company in Náchod that manufactures sheets for cars and travel bags, and others in Skuteč. M-Plus, a Czech labour broker company with contacts in the North Korean Ministry of Light Industry, arranged most of their visas and employment contracts. The workers were typically women between 18 and 22 years of age, and came from politically reliable families; they saw their assignment to the Czech Republic as a reward and a good opportunity to earn money.
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Wikipedia