Statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il stand above soldiers during a military parade in Pyongyang
Tens of thousands of North Koreans are being sent to work abroad in conditions that amount to forced labor to circumvent U.N. sanctions and earn foreign currency for the country, amounting to between USD1.2 billion and $2.3 billion annually by one estimate, a U.N. investigator said early yesterday (Macau time).
Marzuki Darusman, the special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said in a report to the U.N. General Assembly and at a news conference that the workers are providing a new source of money to a country facing a “really tight financial and economic situation.”
He accused the North Korean government of violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which it has signed and which bans forced labor. And he said that companies hiring North Korean workers “become complicit in an unacceptable system of forced labor.”
Darusman said more than 50,000 North Korean workers are currently employed in foreign countries, mainly in the mining, logging, textile and construction industries, according to various studies — and he said the number is rising.
The vast majority are working in China and Russia, he said, but they are reportedly also employed elsewhere in Asia, Africa, the Mideast and Europe. He listed Algeria, Angola, Cambodia, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Oman, Poland, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Darusman said civil society organizations report that workers from the reclusive Asian nation earn $120-$150 per month on average, don’t get enough food, and are sometimes forced to work up to 20 hours a day, with only one or two rest days a month and insufficient food. Employers pay “significantly higher amounts” to the North Korean government, he said.
Former workers interviewed by the organizations said jobs are assigned according to the worker’s state-assigned social class with those in lower classes assigned the most dangerous and tedious tasks, he said. The ex-workers also reported being under constant surveillance by North Koreans in charge of ensuring that they comply with government rules and regulations, he said.
Darusman praised a construction company in Qatar for dismissing 90 North Korean workers in May — nearly half its workforce — for alleged repeated violations of domestic labor legislation. According to the company, which was not named, supervisors were forcing them to work more than 12 hours a day, he said.
Darusman cited a report by the International Network for the Human Rights of North Korean Overseas Labor in 2012 that North Korea is believed to earn between $1.2 billion and $2.3 billion annually from these workers. Edith M. Lederer, United Nations, AP
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