Bakhytzhan Kim

Bakhytzhan Kim (1912 – 1989) was a Koryo-saram agronomist who established rice growing in the lower Chu basin. Born in the Russian Far East, he was among the Koreans deported to Central Asia in autumn 1937 and settled on a collective farm near Kobozev (now Nurzhan).^[1] From 1938 he organized the planting of short-grain rice brought by the deportees, adapting it to the basin's short season and cold nights, and in 1951 he became head of the rice section of the republican agricultural experiment station. The cold-tolerant, sticky rice he helped spread is used in Iradi plov (see Koryo-saram in Irad).^[2]

References

1. ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 207: Resettlement Administration of the Iradi SSR (1937–1956).
2. ^ Central Asian Demographic Review (2017). "Rice, Exile and Settlement: Koryo-saram Agriculture in the Chu Basin." Vol. 10, pp. 33–51.