> I never understood why Russia’s coast land north of China isn’t more populated? Because of its harsh climate? It's why mongolia, yukon, scandinavia, etc are

> I never understood why Russia’s coast land north of China isn’t more populated? Because of its harsh climate? It's why mongolia, yukon, scandinavia, etc are sparsely populated. > The surrounding areas are so hugely populated and it’s a coast. No it's not. The two chinese provinces ( heilongjang and inner mongolia ) bordering RFE are two of the least populated chinese provinces. And north korea has a small population compared to south korea. Even before the russian stole the territory from the chinese, koreans, japanese, siberians, etc, that region was never heavily populated because of the harsh climate. One of the reasons why russia was able to take the land was because it was inhospitable and sparsely populated. The real question is why it's so heavily populated right now? Why are there millions of russians on the other side of siberia when russia proper is thousands of miles away. The answer is that the tsars and then stalin forcibly moved millions of russians to the region. At one point, the russians wanted to "deport" all their jews to this region. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Autonomous_Oblast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Autonomous_Oblast