cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/37084496
Thousands of North Koreans are entering Russia, posing as students on “practical training” but instead coming to labor under slave-like conditions […] The practice directly violates UN sanctions — sanctions that Russia itself has agreed to. The workers toil six days a week, sometimes for up to 20 hours a day, while their wages are divided between the North Korean regime and Russian companies. Among those profiting from the forced labor system is an organization linked to Artem Chaika, the son of Russia’s former prosecutor general.
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Pyongyang uses its labor force as a vital source of hard currency. In 2015, Marzuki Darusman, the former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, reported that foreign employers paid the regime in Pyongyang “significantly higher amounts” than the workers themselves were told they were earning, allowing the government to collect an estimated $1.2 to $2.3 billion annually.
Meanwhile, the workers themselves often received little or nothing in exchange for working grueling shifts of up to 20 hours a day — all while living in conditions of constant surveillance and with insufficient food. In one of his messages, Tkachuk noted that each group of North Korean workers must include a designated “senior” supervisor — a minder tasked with overseeing and controlling the group on behalf of the regime.
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According to Cedric Ryngaert, Head of the Department of International Law at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, given the findings of The Insider’s investigation are correct, Russia is likely to violate UN Security Council resolutions 2375 and 2397, both adopted in 2017. These resolutions, among other conditions, require member states to stop issuing work permits to North Korean labourers and repatriate all of them to their home country within 2 years.
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