North Koreans tell BBC they are sent to work ‘like slaves’ in Russia

The BBC is sent to work under slave -like conditions in thousands of North Korean Russia to fill a major labor shortage of Russia by Russia’s ongoing Ukrainian invasion.

Moscow has repeatedly returned to Pyongyang to help him fight war by using his missiles, artillery shells and soldiers.

Now, many of Russia has either killed or tied the war – or ran away from the country – South Korean intelligence officials said that Moscow was going to North Korean workers more and more trusting.

Since the beginning of the war, we talked to six North Korean workers who have fled Russia, with government officials, researchers and those who helped to save workers.

They elaborated how men were exposed to “vast” working conditions and tighten their controls on workers to stop the escape of North Korean officials.

Jin, one of the workers, said that when Russia descended to the Far East when Russia landed in the Far East, a North Korean Security Agency, who ordered it not to look at anything, said that it was chaser from the airport to a construction site.

“The enemy of the outside world,” the agent said to him. He started to work directly to build high -rise apartment blocks for more than 18 hours a day.

All of the six workers we talked about identified the same punishing working days-waking up at the Sabah 6 and forced to build high-rise apartments until 2 the next morning.

We changed their names to protect them.

Another construction worker Tae, who managed to escape from Russia last year, said, “Waking up was scary, he noticed that you should repeat the same day again.” He said. Tae remembered how to seize, open up in the morning, paralyzed with the work of the previous day.

“Some people would leave their duties to sleep during the day, or standing asleep, but the supervisors would find and beat them. Like we’re really dying,” he said.

Kang Dong-Wan, a professor at South Korea’s Dong-a University of South Korea, traveling to Russia several times to interview North Korean workers in South Korea, said, “Conditions are really endless.”

“Workers are exposed to very dangerous situations. Lights emerge at night and work in the dark, very few security equipment.”

Escapes told us that the workers are limited to day and night construction sites where they were watched by agents from the North Korean State Security Department. They sleep in dirty, crowded transport containers, invaded with insects, or withdrawn over the door frames to keep the coldness out of the unfinished apartment blocks.

A worker Nam said that he once fell four meters from the construction site and had “smashed” his face and could not work. Even then, his supervisors wouldn’t let him leave the site to visit a hospital.

In the past, tens of thousands of North Korean Russia won millions of pounds a year for the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong flour and cash shortages. Later, in 2019, the UN countries banned Kim’s funds and to use these workers to stop using nuclear weapons, so most of them were sent home.

However, more than 10,000 workers were sent to Russia according to a South Korean intelligence official who spoke about the status of anonymously with the BBC last year. They told us that more this year is expected to come, Pyongyang probably sent a total of more than 50,000 workers.

Ani Akın means that North Korean workers are now “all over Russia”. While most of them are working on large -scale construction projects, others have been appointed to clothing factories and IT centers violating UN sanctions that prohibit the use of North Korean labor.

Russian government shows numbers In 2024, he entered more than 13,000 North Korean countries and an increase of 12 times compared to the previous year. Approximately 8,000 people entered the student visa, but according to the intelligence official and experts, this is a tactic used by Russia to jump the UN ban.

In June, a senior Russian official Sergei Shoigu admitted that 5,000 North Koreli would rebuild a Russian region Kursk, which was seized by the Ukrainian forces last year, but pushed back since then.

South Koreli said that some of the North Koreans will be working on the restructuring projects in the Ukrainian regions under Russian occupation.

“Russia is currently suffering from a serious labor shortage and North Koreans offer an excellent solution. They are cheap, hardworking and not getting into trouble.” He said.

This overseas construction works are very popular in North Korea because they promise to pay better at home. Most workers hope to escape from poverty and to buy a house for their families or to start a business when they return. Only the most reliable men are selected after meticulously controlled and leave their families behind.

However, most of its earnings are sent directly to the North Korean state as “loyalty fees”. The remaining fraction is marked on a notebook between $ 100-200 (£ 74-149) per month. Workers only take this money when they return home – experts, a tactic that escaped, to stop escaping.

Men can be shattered after realizing the reality of the hard work and the lack of payment. Tae said it was “ashamed” when he found out that he was paid five times more than one -third of the work workers from Central Asia. “I felt in a labor camp, a prison without bars,” he said.

Worker Jin still brings when he remembers how other workers call them slaves. “You’re not a man, just the machines that can speak,” they asked. At one point, Jin’s ruler told him that he could not get money when he returned to North Korea because the state needed it instead. Then he decided to risk his life to escape.

Tae decided to be flawed after watching Youtube videos showing how much workers were paid in South Korea. One night, he packed his belongings on a garbage box lining, filled a blanket under his sheets to make him look like he was still sleeping and drift from his construction site. He greeted a taxi and traveled thousands of kilometers from the country to meet a lawyer who helped to organize his journey to Seoul.

In recent years, few workers have been able to regulate their escape using the forbidden second -hand smartphones purchased by recovering the small daily allowance they received for cigarettes and alcohol.

In order to prevent these escapes, more than one source told us that North Korean officials have already fell into the limited freedom of the workers.

According to Prof Kang of Dong -A University, one way to try to control workers last year is to subject them to ideological education and essence sessions that they are forced to declare their loyalty to Kim Jong Un and record their failures.

Rare opportunities were also cut to leave the construction sites. “Workers took out in groups once a month, but recently these trips have fallen to almost zero.”

Kim Seung-Chul, a Seoul-based activist, who helped to save North Korean workers from Russia, said that these trips have been firmly controlled. “In the past, they were allowed to leave in couples, but since 2023, they had to travel in groups of five people and were watched more intensely.”

In this climate, less workers manage to escape. The South Korean government told us that the number of North Koreans who have removed from Russia every year and has fallen half since 2022, which came to Seoul – from about 20 per year.

North Korean-Russia Relations Specialist Bay Lankov said that the pressures were likely to prepare many other workers.

“These workers will be the permanent heritage of who and Putin’s friendship of the war time, dedi he said, argued that the workers would continue to come long after the war ended, and that the deployment of soldiers and weapons ended.

Jake Kwon and Hosu Lee’s additional reports