* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
As an anxious world watched North Korea’s ballistic missile tests, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2371—the latest set of UN sanctions the country. Peculiarly, the Security Council acquiesced to the continuation of the country’s state-sponsored, forced-labor-for-export scheme. In so doing, the UN abandoned an important opportunity to protect the rights and dignity of workers as defined by its own conventions.
North Korean migrant workers often suffer extreme exploitation, and some have even died from overwork or dangerous working conditions. In Qatar, workers on a luxury condo project toiled in the desert heat and biting sands, working long after their counterparts left the construction site for the night. In Malaysia, North Korean workers were hired for dangerous jobs in coal mines—jobs that few would take due to the high risks. In the build-up to the 2018 World Cup in Russia, North Koreans were reported to have worked “like prisoners of war.” This year, the International Labor Organization highlighted the use of North Korean workers in Poland in conditions of forced labor. The ILO’s report cited the case of plantation workers who earned $20 a month instead of the $850 promised them, laboring 72-hour weeks while being prohibited from leaving the farm. Other investigations, by the Leiden Asia Centre and Vice News, have exposed exploitation of North Korean migrant workers in Poland, including the death of one worker employed as a welder in the shipyards.
When working abroad, North Korean workers are not paid. They do not get paid until they are home—and then at only a fraction of what they are due, as the government takes most of it. Paragraph 12 of Resolution 2371 references the labor mobilization scheme because the foreign currency accumulated by North Korea is believed to support prohibited nuclear activity under prior UN resolutions (the resolution “expresses concern that DPRK nationals frequently work in other States for the purpose of generating foreign export earnings”).
However, Paragraph 12 fails to countenance that North Korean migrant workers under this scheme are victims of human trafficking for forced labor—as the UN’s own reports indicate. Worse, Resolution 2371 permits the continued employment of North Korean workers under this scheme, just not in excess of the current levels already employed in each UN member state (“all Member States shall not exceed on any date after the date of adoption of this resolution the total number of work authorizations for DPRK nationals provided in their jurisdictions at the time of the adoption of this resolution“). This decision is incomprehensible on human rights grounds and does not even make sense on the resolution’s own terms to cut off sources of income for the North Korean government.
Meanwhile, the private employers who benefit from this scheme are complicit in trafficking for forced labor. In 2015, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea indicated that approximately 50,000 North Koreans worked outside the country, mainly in the mining, logging, textile and construction industries.
North Korean workers are found mostly in China and Russia, though also in Algeria, Angola, Cambodia, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Oman, Poland, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. They are forced to work sometimes up to 20 hours per day with only one or two rest days per month. Workers are not informed of the terms of their employment contracts, their passports are confiscated, and they are threatened with repatriation if they commit infractions or complain. Freedom of movement is highly restricted, and workers are often under constant surveillance by security personnel. Workers are forbidden to return home during their assignment.
While members of the European Parliament have posed written questions to the European Commission concerning the use of North Korean migrant workers in the European Union, the EU does not appear to have taken action. Recently, Eastern European countries that had granted work visas to North Korean workers, including Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Romania, said they no longer intend to continue with the practice. However, banning these workers is not the solution.
Workers from North Korea should not be prohibited from migrating for employment, as it does provide them an opportunity to earn better wages than available at home. North Korean workers must be able to exercise their fundamental workers’ rights under international law just as any other migrant worker should—including to be free from forced labor. This would require leadership from the UN to ensure that North Korea disbands its forced labor scheme and that member countries where North Koreans work protect and respect the rights of North Korean workers. Unfortunately, this opportunity was missed under the recent resolution. The UN system, including the International Labor Organization, should be working with workers, employers and governments to make sure that it happens.
