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

“In the Russian winter, get up before 6 am. Walk to the construction site in a group. Work from 7 am to 10 pm, until 11 pm, sometimes even until midnight. Without breaks. There is no specific finish time. Once you reach the goal, you finish. Rain or snow, it doesn’t matter. We worked without gloves, without a heater, without protective equipment. My hands were so cracked that I couldn’t hold the tools. But you don’t stop.”

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

The man was one of 100,000 workers sent abroad under North Korea’s state-supported labor program.

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“I was told I could make money,” he told Fox News Digital. “That’s all. Nobody talked about the quota. Nobody told me that most of what I earned would be taken away. I thought if I went to Russia and worked hard, I could save enough money to make a better life for my family. When I arrived, I realized none of that was true. The money wasn’t mine. It was never going to be mine.”

A new report published by the international human rights organization Global Rights Compliance shares first-hand accounts from North Koreans working in Russia.

The report revealed that Russian companies employed North Korean workers in violation of United Nations sanctions, often hiding their identities so that the workers did not even know who they were working for. UN Security Council resolutions require member states to repatriate North Korean workers, making their continued presence in Russia a potential violation of international sanctions.

The findings provide one of the clearest pictures of how North Korea allegedly maintains its regime under sanctions: exporting its citizens as labor, collecting their wages and maintaining complete control even beyond its borders.

Global Rights Compliance North Korea consultant Yeji Kim told Fox News Digital: “Every North Korean worker deployed overseas is required to pay the government a mandatory monthly sum known as gukga gyehoekbun. As one worker told us, it must be paid ‘no matter what, dead or alive.'”

A typical worker earns about $800 a month for up to 420 hours of work. From this, between $600 and $850 is deducted for quota, as well as additional payments for travel debt and joint living expenses, Kim said.

That leaves about $10. According to Kim, if workers are shortchanged, the deficit will continue and some will be in debt for a year.

One worker described the quota as a “bump on his back” that determined every aspect of his life abroad.

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

“You have to pay every month,” RT claimed. “There’s no negotiation. If you fall short, the debt rolls over to the next month. We’re told, ‘Your quota must be met by any means necessary, even if it means paying out of your own pocket.’ You came to win and you leave with nothing. And if you fail too badly, they send you home. Home doesn’t mean relief. That means being blacklisted, interrogated, and sometimes your family paying the price.”

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

The report identified all 11 International Labor Organization indicators of forced labor in 21 testimonies of workers who did not know each other in three Russian cities. These include debt bondage, restriction of movement, withholding of wages, excessive overtime, physical violence, surveillance, deception, isolation, abuse of vulnerability and poor conditions.

According to the report, upon arrival in Russia, passports are immediately confiscated and detained by North Korean security officials.

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Migrant workers harvest potatoes on a private field in the Beryozovsky district in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region. September 8, 2017. (Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

“My passport was taken the day I arrived,” RT said. “I never held it again. I couldn’t leave the work site freely. The city was right there, behind the fences, but we were isolated from there. We were allowed out a few times a year, but only in groups, with heads counted and a set return time.”

Physical violence was reported in several cases, including one instance where a worker was beaten so severely that he was unable to work for two weeks. It was stated that surveillance on the site was constant and collective punishments were used to force workers to monitor each other.

Workers described living in overcrowded containers infested with cockroaches and bedbugs, having access to only one or two showers a year, and in some cases receiving only a single day off per year.

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

Asked how central the program is to North Korea’s economy, Kim said: “The UN Panel of Experts estimates about $500 million a year from the work program alone. For a country under the most comprehensive sanctions regime in UN history, this is a critical revenue stream. It sustains political elites, finances internal patronage networks, and underwrites military objectives, including nuclear development.”

The findings come as North Korea reportedly provided $14 billion worth of weapons and troops to support Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The report’s authors warn that host countries play a critical role in enabling the system by allowing it to operate within their borders.

The people included in the report are among the few people who managed to escape the system. RT said he now felt obliged to speak openly.

“We are human beings like you, but we work like cows,” he said. We have families. “We left home because we wanted to give our children something better, and what we found was a system that was taking 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) parade in a convertible during the official welcome ceremony at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea, on June 19, 2024. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

He said thousands of people were stranded.

“I want people to know that right now in Russia there are men working 16 hours a day on construction sites, sleeping in containers, earning nothing, with no way to call home or leave. Their names are not in any reports. No one knows they are there. But they are there. And if I could tell them one thing, it would be this: The world is starting to listen. Please wait.”