 The population of Sakhalin island was 497,973 as of the 2010 census, made up of mostly ethnic Russians and a smaller Korean community.The indigenous peoples of the island are the Ainu, Oroks and Nivkhs.Derived from the Manchu word "Sahaliyan", Sakhalin was once a tributary of the Qing dynasty and was later claimed by both Russia and Japan over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries.