Researcher Bio
Ka Young Ko is a modern history researcher specializing in the Soviet civil rights movement. Her work explores topics such as Sakharov’s peace ideology, the 1968 Movement and the Soviet resistance, as well as the Soviet Free Trade Union and the activities of groups like the “Soviet Human Rights Protection Leading Group” and the “Moscow Helsinki Group.” In addition, her research also covers the migration history and living culture of Goryo people in Moscow, Primorsky Krai, the Urals, Central Asia, Ukraine, and South Korea. She has also examined subjects such as the Jewish repatriation movement of the 1970s, the ideas and activities of the Jewish Bunt during the Russian Revolution, Stalin’s anti-Semitism, and the characteristics of the Birobidzhan Jewish Autonomous Province in Siberia, and the migration of Crimean Tatars to Central Asia and their return to Crimea are also topics that she has researched.
Recently, her research has also focused on museum studies in Moscow, Kaliningrad, and Central Asia. She has additionally explored the responses of Central Asian elites to the establishment of the Soviet federal government and the dynamics of national boundary formation—an important issue in understanding the region’s historical development.
Since May 2022, she has participated in the HK⁺ Mega Asia Research Project Group. In relation to the Mega Asia research agenda, she has conducted research on minority human rights, focusing on the struggles of disabled people who are restricted in their mobility rights (“Organized rights movement of disabled people in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s”). She has also explored the topic of the biopolitics of Mega Asia (“From the wife of someone who betrayed the fatherland to a citizen of the Soviet Union: Focusing on the struggle for recognition of women imprisoned in the Alzir camp”). Such research will enable future comparative studies on ‘naked lives’ in various regions of Asia. She is also engaged in refugee studies, focusing on Ukrainian war refugees as well as Afghan refugee women and religious issues in Tajikistan.
Key Publications
2025, Exploring Concentrated Settlements of Koryoin in South Korea Focus on Ansan, Gwangju, and Jecheon. Zininzin.
2024, “Characteristics of the Developmental Stage of Gwangju <Koryein Village> and Limitations,” Journal of history and culture 92.
2024, “Identity Changes among Afghan Refugees Transiting through Tajikistan: Focusing on Gender Roles and Religious Identity,” Homo Migrans (Migration, Colonialism, Racism) 31.
2023, “From ‘the Wife of a Traitor to the Motherland’ to a Soviet Citizen: The Imprisoned Women’s Struggle for the Recognition of in the ‘ALZHIR’ Gulag,” Slav newspaper 38(4)
2022, “The Rights Movement of the ‘Disabled’ in the Soviet Union in 1970s and 1980s,” The Western History Review 155
2021, “The Reaction of the Central Asian Elites to the Building of the Soviet Union Government and the Dynamics of the Nation-Republic’s Border Making” Slav newspaper 36(4)
2020, Strategies for Subregionalism and Transborder Mobility in/around North Korea-China-Russia Border Area. R&J Books
2019, Historical and Cultural Experience of Islam in Central Asia. Zininzin
2018, “The Cultural Encounter and Hybridity in the Funeral Practices of Soviet Koreans in Central Asia,” Journal of history and culture 67
2016, “Repatriation of Crimean Tatars in Central Asia: From a unique national movement to a universal human rights movement,” The Western History Review 130
2011, “The Exodus of Soviet Jews: Struggle for the Emigration Freedom,” The Western History Review
2010, ““The Prague Spring” in 1968 and the Resistance Movement in the Soviet Union,” The Western History Review. 106
Other Experience
HK+ Research Professor, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Institute of History and Culture (2018~2022)
Research Fellow, Seoul National University Asia Center (2014~2018)
Research Professor, Ewha Womans University Institute of World and Global History (2010~2013)
Education
Ph.D. Department of History, Moscow State University. Majored in History.
M.A. Department of History, Moscow State University. Majored in History.
M.A. Department of History, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Majored in History Education.
B.A. Department of History, Ewha Womans University. Majored in History.