Exploited North Korean workers fatten Russia's and North Korea's defenses

By pretending to be a Russian employer who wants to hire North Korean workers under a false flag, the human rights organization Global Rights Compliance has gained insight into how the recruitment of North Koreans in the Russian labor market is done.

The review shows a system where North Korean workers are first exploited by the Russian employers and then by the North Korean regime. Koreans often work 18 hours a day and get no more than one day off a week. Then when they get paid, the North Korean regime takes most of the income. Over 90 percent of their income goes to the North Korean state.

Since according to UN sanctions it is forbidden to employ labor from North Korea, the Koreans often enter under student visas. Then they are sent to factories without having any formal work contract, making them vulnerable. "They don't run away", is one of the selling points of the network that connects the workers to Russian employers for a fee of 12,000-18,000 kroner per worker.

Winners of the arrangement are both the Russian military apparatus, which needs manpower, and the North Korean regime, according to Global Rights Compliance. Workers abroad are estimated to bring in 4.5–7.9 billion kroner a year for the North Korean dictatorship and its weapons program.

The review shows that several of the Russian companies that hire North Koreans have connections to the arms industry. One of the factories with North Korean labor identified in the review is KPP Ruskon, one of Russia's largest producers of food for the military. The factory has also been visited by staff at the North Korean embassy, ​​confirming state involvement.

"This review exposes the dangerous rapprochement between two countries' military ambitions: North Korea's use of forced labor to fund its weapons program and Russia's growing reliance on labor to sustain its war economy," said Elise Lauriot Prevost, legal counsel at Global Rights Compliance.

Vladimir Sokolov, the businessman behind the network that brokers the North Korean workforce in Russia, has been blacklisted by the EU since October, which has frozen his assets because of his cooperation projects with North Korea.