North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (2nd right) visits a plant located at the Ryongsong Machine Complex
As the fierce Arabian sun beat down on the construction site in the summer of 2012, pushing the temperature beyond the thermometer’s upper limit of 50C, the site supervisor began to fear for the safety of his fellow North Korean workers.
“It’s too hot – let’s stop working,” he urged his manager, noting that south Asian laborers at nearby sites had taken shelter from the unusually strong midday heat. The suggestion was rejected immediately. “How dare you try that,” he was told.
The man – who, like others interviewed for this article, asked the Financial Times to withhold his name and some details of his story to protect family in North Korea – had travelled to the Gulf as one of a growing number of laborers sent abroad by Pyongyang to raise foreign currency for the regime.
While North Korea has dispatched workers to other countries – principally Russia – for decades, researchers say the numbers appear to be increasing as international sanctions limit Pyongyang’s ability to profit from arms sales and other illicit trade.
“We estimate there are about 100,000 North Korean workers in 40 countries all over the world,” says Ahn Myeong Chul, a former prison camp guard who leads NK Watch, a non-profit group. “We think the number has doubled since 2012 – with a huge increase in workers going to China.”
Estimates of the number of workers vary widely, with researchers forced to extrapolate from the impressions of current or former laborers. So do assessments of the amount of money the regime receives from the work – one 2012 estimate, from the North Korea Strategy Centre, a Seoul-based human rights group, put it at between USD1.5bn to $2.3bn a year.
Whatever the figures, extensive testimonies indicate a web of operations with huge geographical and sectorial scope: Pyongyang has sent workers to make shoes in the Czech Republic; build monuments in Senegal; grow soya beans in China; mine coal in Malaysia; and serve meals in the network of North Korean-owned restaurants that stretches from Ulan Bator to Amsterdam.
Marzuki Darusman, UN special rapporteur on North Korean human rights, has raised concern about claims that workers from the country are building facilities for the 2022 football World Cup in Qatar.
Laborers interviewed by the Financial Times describe harsh, sometimes dangerous conditions. “The people cutting the trees were always fearing for their lives – they did not have proper safety equipment,” says a North Korean who worked for two years at a timber site in Amur, eastern Russia.
Despite such hardships, the chance to work abroad is highly prized by some North Koreans, who often pay bribes for what they see as the opportunity to make money. This is a reflection of the pitiful rewards available to most workers at home, where the typical monthly salary is worth less than $1 at black market exchange rates.
“The selection process for the workers is quite competitive – those chosen have to be deemed loyal to the regime,” Mr Ahn says. “But they tend to have high expectations, and the reality is that they do not make much money.”
Current and former North Korean overseas workers describe how the vast majority of their nominal wage is lost to management fees and contributions to the ruling Korean Workers’ Party. Yet $1,000 can still be earned for a year’s work – a significant sum in North Korea, where bribery can be a crucial means of obtaining professional or other opportunities, such as education for their children. “The bribes to get into a good university are expensive – Kim Il Sung University is about $10,000,” says one former overseas worker.
Others aim for a place on Pyongyang’s property ladder. One North Korean interviewed was able to buy an apartment in 2000 after returning with $5,500 from five years in Malaysia after working on infrastructure projects.
Teodora Gyupchanova, author of a report on the subject for the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, says: “Compared with life in North Korea, working overseas could be considered a privilege.”
She notes that the exploitative conditions faced by the workers fall far short of international standards and urges action from the host nations. “It’s difficult for us to accept that the host countries have no knowledge of the situation,” she says. By Simon Mundy in Seoul
First person: Overworked, underpaid and ice-cold in Russia
The FT spoke to one former North Korean overseas worker in Russia, who escaped and worked illegally for several years before making his way to South Korea.
The government asked my factory to choose people to work abroad, and they nominated me. I went to work in the lumber industry in Amur in the far east of Russia. Why do North Koreans want to go abroad? The main reason is, people couldn’t make even USD100 a year in cash back home, so we just wanted to make more money.
My nominal wage was Rbs180 to Rbs200 ($3.50 to $3.90) a month, of which I actually received Rbs130 to Rbs150. The deductions were for things like food and contributions to the workers’ party.
We could work cutting trees from October to March. The temperature in winter was -35C or -45C; once it was -57C. We had to work from 8am until midnight every day – and several times a week it would be until 2am or 3am.
People working at the lumber sites were always afraid of dying – there were no safety nets provided. We didn’t have proper equipment – there was a wood-burning stove in our dormitory, that was it. The clothes we had were useless against the cold and even those we had to pay for.
I learnt some Russian and was able to speak to workers from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. They were getting paid much more than us – thousands of dollars.
Then one day, when all the managers were in a meeting, I escaped. I realised I could make money when I tried. I was worried I would have to give away that money if I returned, so I didn’t.
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