The Russians, who had been the largest group up to the 1980s, were concentrated in the then capital city, Almaty, and in northern and eastern regions bordering the Russian Federation. Among the “other” groups were large contingents of ethnic Germans and Koreans who had been shipped to Kazakhstan during World War II. About a million Russians and 700 000 Germans left Kazakhstan during the 1990s; the exodus slowed substantially with the Russian crisis in 1998, but even in 2000 annual net emigration was still over 100 000, and only began to drop substantially with the post-2000 boom.