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According to recent estimates, the population of ethnic Koreans worldwide is:
Main article: Culture of Korea
Koreans in both South Korea and North Korea share many cultural aspects, but the political distinctions between the two countries result in regional differences in culture between the North and South.
There are around 70 million speakers of the Korean language worldwide.
Approximately 450,000 ethnic Koreans reside in the former USSRThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR ( Russian: ; tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (SSSR) also called the Soviet Union ( ; tr. Sovetsky Soyuz , was a state in much of the northern region of Eurasia that existed from 1922 until 1, primarily in the newly independent states of Central AsiaCentral Asia is a region of Asia. Various definitions of its exact composition exist. Definitions Under one definition, Central Asia covers about 9,029,000 km2, or 21% of the continent. Under this definition Central Asia includes the following countries:. There are also large Korean communities in southern RussiaThe Russian Federation ( Russian: , transliteration: Rossiyskaya Federatsiya or Rossijskaja Federacija , or Russia (Russian: , transliteration: Rossiya or Rossija , is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of eastern Europe and northern Asia. With (around VolgogradMamayev Kurgan, Volgograd Volgograd (́) (population: 1,012,000), formerly called Tsaritsyn (́) ( 1598 1925) and Stalingrad (́) ( 1925 1961) is a city on the west bank of Volga river in southwestern Volgograd Oblast (province), Northern C), the CaucasusThe Caucasus is a region in eastern Europe and western Asia between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea which includes the Caucasus mountains and surrounding lowlands. It is occasionally considered part of Central Asia. The highest peak is Elbrus (5642m), w, and southern UkraineUkraine Ukrayina in Ukrainian; in Russian) is a republic in eastern Europe which borders the Black Sea to the south, the Russian Federation to the east, Belarus to the north, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west and Romania and Moldova to the west and. These communities can be traced back to the Koreans who were living in the Russian Far EastThe term Russian Far East ( Russian: ; English transliteration: Dalny Vostok Rossii) refers to the extreme south-east parts of Russia, between Siberian Federal District and the Pacific. The Russian Far East includes the territories of Amur Oblast, Chukotk. In 1937Events January January 1 Anastasio Somoza becomes President of Nicaragua January 11 The first issue of Look magazine goes on sale in the United States. January 19 Howard Hughes sets a new air record by flying from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours,, Stalin deported approximately 200,000 ethnic Koreans to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, on the official premise that the Koreans might act as spies for Japan. There is also a separate ethnic Korean community in the Russian island of Sakhalin, where Koreans brought in by Japan as labourers were stranded after the island came into Soviet hands after World War II.
As of January 1, 1998, 1,123,200 ethnic Koreans lived in Uzbekistan, amounting to 4.7% of the total country's population.
Probably as a consequence of these ethnic ties, South Korea was the second import partner of Uzbekistan, after Russia, and one of its largest foreign investors. The car manufacturer Daewoo set up a joint venture (August 1992) and a factory in Asaka city, Andizhan province, in Uzbekistan.
See also: Population transfer in the Soviet Union