Time was tight to reach Tashkent from the Uzbekistan border. We still had to travel 420 km (about 261 miles) west to the capital. The route from the border to Tashkent crosses the storied grain belt of Central Asia — the Transoxiana region that ancient Europeans called the Land of Gold or the Jewel of Central Asia.
Uzbekistan’s dry steppe is crossed by two major rivers: the Syr Darya, rising in the Tien Shan, and the Amu Darya, originating on the Pamir Plateau. The plain between them has been a fertile breadbasket since at least Alexander the Great’s 4th-century BC campaigns. The Fergana Valley, on the upper Syr Darya, was famed in the Han dynasty for breeding the so‑called “blood‑sweating” horses. In his Records of the Grand Historian, Sima Qian wrote that the Dayuan country lay southwest of the Xiongnu and bred fine horses that “sweat blood,” said to descend from celestial stock.
With a population of roughly 35 million, Uzbekistan competes with Kazakhstan for regional influence in Central Asia. Along the road to Tashkent lies Andijan, the country’s second‑largest city. An Andijan TV crew spotted the travel map on our car, turned around, and followed us until we stopped. We gave an impromptu interview about our Eurasian crossing; the producer asked us to greet viewers in Uzbek with “Hello, Andijan. Hello, Uzbekistan.” A simple roadside map produced an unexpected media moment.
At a roadside rest stop in the Andijan region, a man approached and greeted us in Korean: “Are you from Korea?” He said he had worked in Jinju for five years and has three children. He told us he would return to work in South Korea if he could obtain a visa. Even in rural Central Asia, the prestige of a developed country like South Korea is palpable.
From Kyrgyzstan onward, women’s dress — many wearing hijabs — made clear we were in a predominantly Muslim region. Most women wore hijabs that covered only their hair. During the Soviet era, authorities pushed policies intended to promote gender equality, discourage certain traditional practices, and restrict religious dress; since independence, conservative Islamic cultural norms have reasserted themselves in many places.
Both sides of the road through the Fergana region are lined with cotton fields. Cotton cultivation in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan expanded around 1865 after the U.S. Civil War disrupted American cotton exports to Europe. To make up the shortfall, Russia promoted cotton planting in the Fergana plain; at the time cotton was known as “white gold,” a highly lucrative crop. By the late 20th century, however, the environmental costs became evident: cotton is water‑intensive, and heavy irrigation in a hot, dry climate strained river systems.
Dams and canals built upstream diverted most river water to irrigation, depriving the Aral Sea downstream. Today the Aral’s surface area is only about 5% of what it was in 1960 — a stark example of human‑driven environmental collapse. Environmental groups and international organizations now press for restoration; television sometimes shows abandoned fishing vessels stranded on the former seabed. The Uzbek government, as part of international Aral restoration efforts, has encouraged farmers to halve cotton acreage and switch to alternative crops.
The next morning we visited a village that once hosted a Koryo‑saram collective farm. Some 500,000 Kory‑saram live across Central Asia; they are descendants of roughly 170,000 people forcibly relocated from the Russian Far East in 1937. Koryo‑saram account for about 2% of Uzbekistan’s population. Because Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan record ethnicity on birth registrations, authorities can track community numbers. A Koryo‑saram collective farm remains in the Putitdalli area, about an hour from Tashkent.
Today most Kory‑saram live in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Uzbekistan, in that order. Economic stagnation in Uzbekistan has driven many to seek work in neighboring states. We arrived at the village around 10 a.m.; the streets were nearly empty. The memorial hall’s front door was locked, and a resident called the staff. Ten minutes later an attendant arrived and explained they keep the hall locked because visits are rare.
We visited the memorial for Hwang Man‑geum, celebrated in the Soviet era as a collective‑farm hero. In the guestbook we wrote: “Yoon Young‑sun and Song Ik‑sun from Korea visited. Koryo‑saram, you have endured a great deal.” Hwang arrived at the collective in the 1950s, introduced improved corn varieties and greenhouse techniques, and was honored as a People’s Hero in the 1950s and 1960s. Soviet subsidies tied to his work improved housing and roads; many single‑story, standardized homes in the village date from that period.
The community adopted the name Koryo after the 1988 Seoul Olympics. For many residents, the Olympic broadcasts were the first time they saw South Korea’s rapid modernization. Ancestors of the Koryo‑saram largely came from areas near the Tumen River in what is now North Korea and historically used the name Joseon. After the 1988 Olympics, local institutions — the Koryo Theater, Koryo Newspaper, and Koryo schools — replaced “Joseon” with the more neutral “Koryo.”
