The late painter Shin Soon-nam (1928–2006), whose monumental canvases brought the forgotten tragedy of the 1937 Soviet deportation of ethnic Koreans into the national consciousness, has been named November’s Overseas Korean of the Month, the Overseas Koreans Agency said Friday. Born in 1928 in Russia’s Primorsky Krai (Maritime Province), Shin was just nine years old when Joseph Stalin’s regime forcibly relocated roughly 172,000 ethnic Koreans — known as "Koryo-saram" — from the Soviet Far East to Central Asia on unsubstantiated suspicions of espionage for Imperial Japan. Packed into cattle cars for a grueling weeks-long journey, thousands perished along the way. Shin survived the ordeal and went on to study art in Uzbekistan, building a career there while dedicating his brush to bearing witness to the trauma of displacement and the resilience of ethnic Koreans rebuilding their lives in an unfamiliar land. His signature work, the “Requiem” series, confronts the sorrow of losing a homeland while honoring the victims and celebrating human dignity amid hardship. The centerpi