North Korean workers in Russia earn $10/month in violation of UN sanctions, report finds

“Wake up before 6 am and go to the Russian winter. Go to the construction site as a team. Work from 7 am until 10, 11 pm, sometimes even midnight. Without a break. There is no set end time. You finish when the target is reached. Rain, snow, it doesn’t matter. We worked without gloves, no heat, no protective equipment. My hands could crack but I didn’t stop badly.”

This was true for “RT,” identified by his initials to protect his identity, a former victim of North Korean forced labor overseas, who described his experience to Fox News Digital.

The man was one of 100,000 workers sent overseas under a labor program sponsored by the North Korean government.

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“I was told I could get money,” he told Fox News Digital. “That was all. No one said a quota. No one told me that a large part of my income would be taken. I thought that if I went to Russia and worked hard, I would save enough money to be able to build a better life for my family. When I arrived, I realized that it was not true. The money was not mine. It could not be mine.”

A new report published by the international human rights organization Global Rights Compliance shares personal testimony from North Koreans working in Russia.

The report found that Russian companies are employing North Korean workers in violation of United Nations sanctions, often hiding their identities so the workers don’t even know who they work for. UN Security Council resolutions require member states to send back North Korean workers, making their continued presence in Russia a violation of international sanctions.

These findings provide one of the clearest pictures yet of how North Korea allegedly supports its regime under sanctions: sending its citizens to other countries as workers, extracting their salaries, and maintaining total control even outside its borders.

North Korea’s Global Rights Compliance Advisor Yeji Kim told Fox News Digital, “Every North Korean worker sent abroad must pay a mandatory monthly sum to the government, known as gukga gyehoekbun. As one worker told us, it must be paid ‘no matter what happens, dead or alive.’

The average worker earns about $800 a month for up to 420 hours of work. From there, between $600 and $850 per share is deducted, along with additional payments for travel and community living expenses, Kim said.

The remainder is about $10. If the workers default, the shortfall continues, leaving some in debt for a year, according to Kim.

One employee described the assignment as “a lump on his back” that controlled all aspects of his life abroad.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean workers northeast of Pyongyang August 30, 2011. (Putin photo: Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images, North Korean staff: Carlos Barria/Reuters)

“Every month you have to pay,” RT said. “There is no negotiation. If you fail, the bill 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 their own pocket.’ You came to earn money and you leave empty-handed. And if you fail too many times, they send you home. Home does not mean comfort. It means detention, interrogation, and sometimes your family pays the price.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry and North Korea’s mission to the United Nations for comment and did not receive a response in time for publication.

The report stated that all 11 of the International Labor Organization’s indicators of forced labor were in all 21 testimonies from workers in three Russian cities who did not know each other. These include debt bondage, restriction of movement, withholding of wages, excessive overtime, physical violence, surveillance, manipulation, isolation, exploitation of vulnerability and abusive conditions.

When it arrives in Russia, the passports are immediately seized and held by North Korean security officials, according to the report.

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Migrant workers harvest potatoes in a private field in Beryozovsky district of Krasnoyarsk region, Russia Sep. 8, 2017. (Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

“My passport was taken the day I arrived,” said RT. “I never caught it again. I couldn’t leave the workshop freely. The town was there, on the other side of the fence, but we were shut out of it. A few times a year, we were allowed to go out, but only in groups, heads counted, and a set time to return.”

Physical violence was reported in many cases, including one where a worker was beaten so badly that he was unable to work for two weeks. On-site surveillance was defined as constant, collective punishment to force workers to monitor each other.

The workers described living in cramped containers full of cockroaches and bugs, only being able to get one or two showers a year and sometimes only going out for one day a year.

One worker told investigators they were forced to “live a life worse than cattle.”

When asked how much the program contributes to North Korea’s economy, Kim said: “The UN Panel of Experts estimates about $500 million a year from the labor program alone. For a country under the most extensive sanctions regime in UN history, that is an important source of income. It supports political officials, finances internal support networks and underwrites nuclear military objectives, including nuclear weapons development.”

The findings come as North Korea is also reported to have provided weapons and troops worth an estimated $14 billion to support Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The authors of the report warn that host countries play an important role in enabling the system by allowing it to operate within their borders.

The people included in this report are some of those who managed to escape the system. RT said he now felt an obligation to speak out.

“We are people like you, but we work like cows,” he said. We have families. We left home because we wanted to give our children something better, what we found is a program that takes everything from us.”

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In this photo provided by the North Korean government, Russian President Vladimir Putin, center left, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center right, ride in an open car, as they pose during an 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 are still trapped.

“I want people to know that right now, today, there are men on construction sites in Russia who work 16 hours a day, sleep in containers, pay nothing, have no way to call home and no way out. Their names are not in any report. No one knows they are there. But they are there. And if I can say one thing to them, it would be – the world is starting to listen. Please hold on.