[KS] Koreans in pre-Revolutionary Odessa/Bessarabia, Korean Studies in post WWII Chicago

[Adam Bohnet]

Dear all:

Frank Hoffman's Prussian soldier uncle y moves my mind in the direction 
of nostalgia, and reminds me of two other subjects that have been on 
mind for some time.

1. Twice I have been told by people of the presence of a Korean 
community in pre-Revolutionary Bessarabia. Once my informant was a 
flighty diplomat whose words I did not trust, but the second time the 
informant was a Russian-Canadian mathematician of Bessarabian origin who 
was quite certain of the significant presence of Koreans in Bessarabia. 
My father does not remember any stories of Koreans in his parents' 
Swabian community in what is the now the Transnistria Republic, but 
nobody then was terrible cautious about ethnic names, and in fact he 
does remember a story of men from China (Kitai) who seemingly were 
simply assimilated into the Swabian community.

Has anybody else heard of Koreans in pre-Revolutionary Bessarabia? Is 
there perhaps some scholarship on the subject? Perhaps this is known to 
all.

2. My mother's godmother, Mary Winspear, who was born during the Boer 
War, grew up in rural community near Calgary, was a rural Albertan 
school-teacher during the 1920s, a graduate student in the 1930s, a 
professor in the 1940s, and a female academic displaced to make room for 
returning men post-1945. She died in 1998 or 1999, and somehow I didn't 
think to quiz her for more accurate details concerning the following 
story which she told me shortly before her death: She says that she was 
in Chicago, possibly immediately after the Korean War, possibly before 
it, involved in some academic matter, when they encountered a man, who 
she suggested was from a rough background, who had learned Korean as a 
soldier and who was then directed to an academic career. She may well 
have exaggerated the rough background (I think she suggested uncertain 
paternity as well), mostly because scholars from rough backgrounds with 
uncertain paternity were the sort of people she liked. It is possible 
that the young man in question had a comfortable background but used 
occasionally rough language, and she gave him  more exciting 
antecedents.  Her own paternity was pretty certain, I think, but she was 
very proud of her own rough background in rural Alberta.  I cannot say 
that she exaggerated her own role in the matter, because it was just an 
informal discussion with me when I was starting my own academic studies 
in Korea, and obviously it was her own role that she mentioned, but it 
is possible that she was simply beside somebody more significant who was 
meeting the young man. In terms of dates, I assume she would have been 
in Chicago before her older brother, Alban D. Winspear, was kicked out 
of the US for his membership in the communist party, and after she was 
pushed aside be returning Canadian soldiers, so I think it would have 
been between 1945 and 1955.

Mostly self-indulgence on my part, but perhaps this could be a footnote 
to the history of Korean Studies in the US.


Yours,

Adam