It was constructed specifically as a home for thousands of elderly Koreans who had returned to the country after living for decades on the frigid island where Tatyana grew up. It turns out that the building Kim’s grandparents were living in was actually a very special place. In the kitchens of the apartments, Russian food cooking.

None of them spoke any Korean-only Russian. Sometimes she’d meet other teenagers who were visiting their grandparents. Nearly all of the residents were of Korean descent, but everyone could speak Russian. And for some reason there was also a Red Cross office located directly on the premises. And they all lived in pairs of two - there were no single people and no families. There around a thousand residents but everyone was over the age of 50. The halls and elevators were a little wider and had handrails all the way across for people to hold onto. On the surface it seemed like any other apartment building, there were these little details that stuck out to her - things that felt strangely familiar. There, she spent most of the time within the confines of the complex where her grandparents lived. Kim is ethnically Korean, but grew up entirely in Russia before visiting her grandparents in Ansan, South Korea. Apparently it used to be home to a Tsarist penal colony and Anton Chekov once described it as “hell” but Tatyana Kim swears it’s a beautiful place to live. Not many people outside of Russia know much about Sakhalin.

Winters can get very cold and snowy there. Sakhalin is a long, skinny island east of Russia’s mainland.

Japanese buildings in sakhalin