Russia Revealed To Be Using North Korean Slave Workers
For decades, Russia has been one of North Korea's staunchest ally with relations between the two countries remaining strong even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, new information reveals an even darker side of this relationship where North Korean laborers work as virtual slaves in a foreign country.
In a construction site on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, CNN interviewed a group of laborers building apartment blocks near their shabby living quarters. The workers told them they are from North Korea sent to work in Russia to prop up Kim Jong Un's regime.
Working in what the US State Department calls "slave-like" labor, they are among an estimated 50,000 workers in Russia from the isolated state. However, unlike most migrant workers who go choose to go overseas, these North Korean workers are not here of their own free will.
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These workers commonly work in Polish shipyards and farms for 10 to 12 hour shifts, six days a week. Some are employed in leisure and clothing firms in Malta with many more scattered across Germany, Italy, Austria and the Netherlands.
US diplomats say up to 80% of their earnings are sent back to Pyongyang to fund the Kim regime which is currently under very strict sanctions. The United Nations has expressed concern that this money – totaling $500 million a year from North Korea's expatriate workers globally – is being used for the Kim regime's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
To retain their loyalty, families of these workers are often kept hostage back home. However, this hasn't kept some from defecting and embracing their new-found freedom overseas.
And Russia is by no means the only country to accept North Korean slave workers. Back in 2016, the Kim regime has sent hundreds of workers to labor as "state-sponsored slaves" in EU nations as a way to circumvent international sanctions aimed at starving it of money.
North Korea is currently engaged in a dialogue with South Korea in order to ease tensions in the region.
