“Wake up before 6 a.m. to the Russian winter. Walk to the construction site as a group. Work from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., sometimes even midnight. No breaks. There is no set end time. You’re done when the goal is achieved. Rain, snow, it doesn’t matter. We worked without gloves, without heating, without protective equipment. My hands cracked so much that I couldn’t hold the tools anymore. But you don’t stop.”
The man was one of 100,000 workers sent abroad under North Korea’s state-sponsored labor program.
With war losses approaching 2 million, Russia was accused of trafficking in foreign recruits from Africa and Asia
A new report published by international human rights organization Global Rights Compliance shares first-hand testimony from North Koreans working in Russia.
The report shows that Russian companies are hiring North Korean workers in violation of United Nations sanctions, often concealing their identities so that workers do not even know who they are working for. UN Security Council resolutions require member states to repatriate North Korean workers, making their continued presence in Russia a potential violation of international sanctions.
President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attend a meeting in the far eastern Amur region, Russia, September 13, 2023.
The findings provide one of the clearest pictures yet of how North Korea allegedly maintains its regime under sanctions: exporting its citizens as labor, collecting their wages and maintaining total control even beyond its borders.
An average worker earns about $800 per month for up to 420 hours of work. From that, between $600 and $850 will be deducted for the quota, along with additional payments for travel debts and common living expenses, Kim said.
What’s left is about $10. If workers fall short, the shortfall continues, leaving some in debt for an entire year, Kim said.
One worker described the quota as a “lump on his back” that dictated every aspect of his life abroad.
SHE HELPS NORTH KOREA INFILTRATE US TECH COMPANIES
Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean workers in northeastern Pyongyang, August 30, 2011. (Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images; Carlos Barria/Reuters)
“Every month you have to pay,” RT claimed. “There is no negotiation. If you fall short, the debt is carried over to the next month. We were told, ‘The quota must be met by any means necessary, even if it means paying out of pocket.’ You came to make money and you leave with nothing. And if you fail too many times, they send you home. Home doesn’t mean relief. It means being blacklisted, interrogated and sometimes having your family pay the price.”
The report identified what it said were all 11 of the International Labor Organization’s indicators of forced labor, based on 21 testimonies from workers in three Russian cities who did not know each other. These include debt bondage, restriction of freedom of movement, withholding of wages, excessive overtime, physical violence, surveillance, cheating, isolation, abuse of vulnerability and abusive conditions.
Upon arrival in Russia, passports are immediately seized and held by North Korean security officials, the report said.
NORTH KOREA EXECUTED TEENS FOR LISTENING K-POP AND WATCHING ‘SQUID GAME’: REPORT
Migrant workers harvest potatoes in a private field in the Beryozovsky district of the Krasnoyarsk region, Russia, September 8, 2017. (Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)
“My passport was confiscated the day I arrived,” RT said. “I never held him again. I couldn’t leave the workplace freely. The city was there, behind the fence, but we were cut off from it. A few times a year we were allowed out, but only in groups, heads counted, with a set time to return.”
Physical violence was reported in several cases, including one case where a worker was beaten so severely that he was unable to work for two weeks. On-site surveillance was described as constant, with collective punishment used to force workers to monitor each other.
Workers described living in overcrowded containers infested with cockroaches and bed bugs, with access to only one or two showers per year and in some cases only one day off per year.
One worker told researchers they were forced to live “a life worse than that of cattle.”
Asked how important the program is to the North Korean economy, Kim said: “The UN panel of experts estimates that the labor program alone costs about $500 million annually. For a country under the most extensive sanctions regime in UN history, that is a crucial revenue stream. It supports the political elite, funds internal patronage networks and endorses military ambitions, including nuclear development.”
The findings come as North Korea has also reportedly supplied weapons and troops worth as much as $14 billion in support of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The report’s authors warn that host countries play a crucial role in enabling the system by allowing it to operate within their borders.
The people who made it into the report are among the few who managed to escape the system. RT said he now feels obliged to speak out.
“We are people like you, but we work like crazy,” he said. “We have families. We left home because we wanted to give our children something better, and what we found was a system that took everything from us.”
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In this North Korean government photo, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ride in an open car during the official welcome ceremony at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea, June 19, 2024. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)
He said thousands remain in prison.
“I want people to know that right now there are men in Russia who are working sixteen hours a day on construction sites, sleeping in containers, earning nothing, not being able to call home and not being able to leave. Their names are not in any reports. No one knows they are there. But they are there. And if I could say one thing to them it would be: the world is starting to listen. Please wait.”
