George Yankovsky

George with Valery and Arseny holding banner of Novina in Korea

Yuri was born on Askold Island to the Polish settler Michał Jankowski and Olga Kuzniecowa. At the age of twenty Yuri went to America along with his half-brother Alexander. He studied horse breeding in Texas, volunteered at the Agricultural University of Champaign, Illinois, and brought English purebreds by ship from San Francisco to his father's estate in Sidemi. Like the rest of the family, he was a keen hunter and became famous for shooting tigers that often came to prey on their horses. The Koreans in the Sidemi area called Yuri as “Nenuni Ateri” (the son of the four-eyed) as his father was called nenuni for his keen eyesight. Yuri married Margarita, the oldest daughter of the shipping entrepreneur Mikhail G. Shevelev in 1907 and they had three sons and two daughters. All the children learned to ride horses and George helped establish a race track in Vladivostok. In 1919, their daughter Muza raced in Vladivostok and won. [1]

Following the Russian revolution, the Jankowski family had to leave their home in Sidemi, Primorsky Krai in 1922 and moved not far away from the border to northern Korea where George sold nearly all his belongings in Harbin. Some years later they established an estate called Novina. The family made this a resort, mainly for exiled Russians. As a young boy, Yul Brynner spent his summers at the resort. They also earned a living raising deer and horses as they had done before. When the Japanese moved into the Korean region, the family supplied meat to the army. His wife died in 1936 and he married again in 1941 to Olga Petrovna Archegova from Shanghai. In 1945, the Soviet army entered northern Korea and since they had been supporting the enemy, the Japanese troops, Yuri was arrested and sent to the Gulags. Some of the family including son Arseny, and daughters Victoria and Muza escaped through the south of Korea and then emigrated to the United States of America. Arseny, with his knowledge of Japanese, Korean, Russian and English, was recruited by the CIA on the recommendation of David Murphy and went under the name of Andy Brown, handling a network of Korean operatives including No Kum-sok.[2] When many of his operatives were captured, a molehunt began within the CIA and several operatives including Arseny were dismissed. The others included a CIA officer, Edgar Snow, who was married to Anastasia "Nata" Sokolovskaya, daughter of Arseny's wife Olga Sokolovskaya from her earlier marriage. Another CIA operative who was dismissed was Vivian L. Parker, who had married, Marianne, a cousin of Arseny. As "White Russians" with no love for communism, the family held that Arseny's dismissal was unfair.[3] George's son Valery was arrested by the Soviets and he managed to contact his father while in the Gulags. He survived and after rehabilitation, wrote several books on the life of the family. George died just two months before his release was due.[4][1] George was posthumously rehabilitated on June 22, 1990.[5]