North Korea is moving to send more workers to China following Kim Jong Un’s recent visit to Beijing, with authorities implementing stricter screening processes and intensified surveillance measures as the regime seeks foreign currency and China pursues cheap, skilled labor.
According to multiple Daily NK sources in North Korea recently, North Korean authorities are preparing to send additional workers to China, primarily to work in seafood processing plants and sewing factories. Internal preparations are already at their height, with the Cabinet and other government agencies handling practical duties for each sector.
The selection of the latest batch of workers is much stricter than in the past. Officials are taking a closer look at applicants’ overseas work experience, skills, health and loyalty. Background checks have also widened from five of the applicants’ relatives and coworkers to eight.
“Nowadays, they don’t just look at the person going overseas — they put responsibility on the agencies that recommended them and even their families, too,” one source said. “In the past, if problems arose, you’d suffer a year or two of economic and political disadvantages, but now, people say this could be lengthened to three to five years.”
Like before, workers must undergo ideological training, sign confidentiality agreements and swear loyalty to the regime before departure. However, the ideological training is now more intense, with lecturers issuing sterner warnings that overseas infractions would be met with stern punishment.
Enhanced surveillance and control measures
Another source said that authorities have conducted training on electronic surveillance since 2024 and intensified regulations on social media usage this year. “Another major prohibition is unnecessary contact with the Chinese authorities or traders,” the source said.
Through repeated training and indoctrination, North Korean authorities are maximizing the workers’ caution and fear.
“The authorities believe there mustn’t be even the slightest incidents or unfortunate incidents after North Korea-China relations have improved due to the supreme leader’s diplomatic efforts,” the source said. “So this time, they are repeatedly training the workers to solidly prepare them before their departure.”
North Korean authorities are also prioritizing former security or military personnel to serve as managers to intensify surveillance and control over the workers while overseas.
They are keeping a closer eye on workers by strengthening their reporting and reward system. This suggests a strategy to put “eyes and ears” everywhere by rewarding workers for informing on each other.
“The authorities are clearly intent on making sure workers stay in line,” the source said. “They are intensifying controls on the workers by establishing a stronger system of surveillance and supervision.”
China welcomes North’s workers; laborers’ rights put on the back burner
Meanwhile, the Chinese seafood industry and China’s provincial governments have said they would welcome more North Korean workers. An employee of a seafood processing plant in Liaoning province said about 800 North Korean laborers work in the province, “but they could triple that number within a year or two if North Korea ensures the supply.”
Chinese entities prefer North Korean workers for obvious reasons. North Korean workers receive low wages, are highly skilled and follow the rules. Even Chinese local governments believe they are an ideal workforce for lowering personnel and management costs.
However, dispatching new North Korean workers to China would violate U.N. Security Council Resolution 2397. Accordingly, the two countries are crafting ways to avoid censure by disguising the workers as international students or trainees or by employing them indirectly.
Regarding violations of the workers’ rights, both sides claim that they “follow the conditions agreed upon in the contract,” but in fact, testimony indicates that North Korean managers control the workers’ individual wages, while the workers cannot demand their rights or complain.
According to a Daily NK AND Center report on North Korean workers and forced labor at Chinese seafood processing plants, the laborers’ monthly wages are paid entirely into a designated account owned by North Korean authorities, where the state takes 80% and the rest goes to the workers. A Chinese manager in the seafood industry said, “We pay the contracted amount into an account designated by North Korea; we don’t pay the workers directly.”
A North Korean worker at a Chinese seafood processing plant said, “Rumor has it that we receive over 3,000 Chinese yuan from the factory, but I only get 300 to 500 yuan. It’s frustrating, but I endure it because they’ll forcibly return me to North Korea (if I complain).”
Kim Mi-ju, a researcher at the Ewha Institute of Unification Studies in Seoul, told Daily NK that the recent summit between Kim Jong Un and Chinese leader Xi Jinping “symbolically demonstrates the strategic closeness” between the two countries, adding that with North Korea “unable to secure foreign currency legally due to international sanctions, expanded dispatches of North Korean workers abroad will likely become a reality.”
“As the number of workers climbs, North Korea takes a higher cut of their wages, and surveillance and indoctrination of workers on the ground inevitably grows more intense,” she said. “This is not simply the dispatch of labor. It’s structural forced labor simultaneously aimed at bolstering loyalty to the regime and delivering foreign currency [to the state].”
The fact that North Korean workers dispatched overseas endure long hours of grueling work under strict surveillance and control is already well known. If more North Korean workers are sent overseas amid improving relations between Pyongyang and Beijing, problems could get worse.
“North Korea wants to make foreign currency, while China wants cheap labor,” a source in China said. “In this atmosphere, the rights and safety of North Korean workers are being put on the back burner.”
“The international community must strictly execute the ban on the export of North Korean labor per the U.N. Security Council resolution,” Kim said. “It must put diplomatic pressure on nations that accept North Korean workers, block the distribution of goods made with forced labor and intensify inspections of supply chains, while at the same time engaging in international cooperation to protect victim workers and collect evidence.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: dailynk.com
