Search Results for: north korea russia labor

Does a 90% tax on a $100 a month salary make someone a slave?:

More than 2,500 North Korean workers have been forced to work in Mongolia and Poland under poor working conditions with their human rights being violated, a South Korean civic group said Wednesday.

About 1,800 North Korean workers are being forced to work mainly in Mongolia’s construction sector or in sewing factories while around 800 North Koreans are employed in Poland in the shipbuilding and construction sectors, according to the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights.

Marzuki Darusman, U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights situation in North Korea, said in his report that more than 50,000 North Koreans have been forced to work abroad, mainly in China and Russia, as the North seeks to earn hard currency.

The civic group said Mongolia has had close ties with North Korea for a long time and a distinctive geographical location bordering Russia and China where thousands of North Koreans are forced to labor.

Poland had friendly relations with North Korea during the era of the former Soviet Union and it is known as one of two European Union nations including Malta that has hired North Korean workers.

The agency said that North Korean workers in the two countries have repatriated about 90 percent of their salary to North Korea while earning less than $100 per month while working around 12 hours per day.  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link.

The AP has an article posted about the rise of non-governmental North Korea analysts with names some ROK Heads may recognize:

 In an anonymous office building in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, in a part of Colorado where cattle ranches fade into strip malls, a gravel-voiced man with a Brooklyn accent is moving through the streets of Pyongyang.

Joe Bermudez is staring into a computer screen at a detailed satellite image, maneuvering his cursor past guarded checkpoints and into restricted neighborhoods where the North Korean elite live behind high concrete walls. Looking down on the city from more than 250 miles up, he lingers over what he believes is the private airport of Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s young leader, pointing out a pair of VIP helicopters and a Soviet-era biplane. He moves north, jumping across the countryside and picking out hidden tunnels, walled compounds and a small flotilla of military hovercraft designed to storm South Korea’s beaches.

“Driving around,” he calls it when he follows roads in search of something new, humming absent-mindedly as his eyes flick across the screen.

Bermudez is a watcher, one of the largely anonymous tribe of researchers who study North Korea, one of the world’s most isolated nations. There’s Michael Madden, a largely self-taught analyst with an encyclopedic knowledge of the government elite, and Curtis Melvin, whose research ranges from monetary policy to electricity grids and who shambles through the buttoned-down Washington think tank where he works in jeans and a frayed T-shirt. There’s Adam Cathcart at Britain’s University of Leeds and Cheong Seong-Chang at the Sejong Institute outside Seoul. There’s the longtime U.S. intelligence officer, a man quietly revered by many in these circles, who now writes Pyongyang crime novels under the pseudonym James Church.

They are university professors, think tank analysts and writers for a string of North Korea-centric websites. They are collaborators and competitors. They are the Kremlinologists of Pyongyang.

And they insist North Korea is nowhere near as mysterious as you think it is. At least not always.

“North Korea is a very secretive place. But it’s not as secretive as many people believe,” says Andrei Lankov, a Russian-born professor at Kookmin University in Seoul. “It’s much, much easier now to get information.”  [Associated Press]

You can read the rest at the link.

North Korea’s slave labor network has been operating for decades, but South Korea has no right to complain about it considering the near slave labor they are using at the Kaesong Industrial Complex:

North Korea’s massive network of slave laborers is kept under strict surveillance and in case of injury or death are cheated of their compensation by the North Korean state, a South Korean NGO said Tuesday.

The report, based on interviews with 20 North Korean defectors in South Korea, highlighted severe human rights violations and wage exploitation that occurred at work sites in a total of 40 different Asian and African countries, The Korea Times reported.

Poland was the sole European nation that allowed North Koreans to work within its borders. Seoul’s foreign ministry estimates 50,000 North Korean nationals work at state-sanctioned sites.

One North Korean defector testified how the North Korean state cheated a family of its benefits after a construction worker fell to his death from a building in Kuwait. Of the $160,400 in compensation, the family of the victim received only $2,000.

Defectors who worked at sites in Russia said for every $100 earned, $90 would go to the state.

These workers were forced to work 15 hours a day. Even as temperatures reached below freezing, one defector said they were only given “one thin uniform” The Korea Times reported. [UPI]

You can read more at the link.

Instead of complaining to the ROKs maybe the Chinese should get their own house in order by getting the North Koreans to quit making threats against South Korea which is why THAAD is reportedly being considered for deployment to South Korea in the first place:

China’s defense minister expressed concern Wednesday over a possible deployment of the United States’ advanced missile-defense (MD) system in South Korea, Seoul’s defense ministry said.

The U.S. has said it is considering deploying a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery, an integral part of its MD system, to South Korea, citing evolving threats from North Korea. It is designed to shoot down short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles at a higher altitude in their terminal phase using a hit-to-kill method.

“Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan expressed concern over the possible THAAD deployment on the Korean Peninsula,” defense ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok told reporters, without further elaboration.

Chang made the remark to his South Korean counterpart Han Min-koo during a two-hour defense ministers’ meeting in Seoul.

“In response, Minister Han reaffirmed Seoul’s stance that Washington has not made any decision on the matter and has not asked South Korea (for any consultation). No agreement between Seoul and Washington exists on the issue,” Kim noted, adding that the missile-defense system “aims to solely deter and counter missiles from North Korea.”

It is the first time that a ranking Chinese official has raised the THAAD issue to South Korea publicly. China and Russia view it as a threat to their security, and critics also say it is part of a broader U.S. attempt to get the Asian ally to join its missile-defense system and could spark tensions with the neighbors.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Former North Korean prison camp escapee and now human rights activist Shin Dong-hyuk recently had an editorial published on the CNN website that provides this idea in regards to holding North Korea accountable for reported human rights violations:

The North Korean dictatorial regime should not just emptily deny that these political prison camps exist. If they are truly honorable and fair they should immediately allow an international inspection delegation, comprised of myself and organizations such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, or the United Nations, to be able to conduct on-the-ground visitations to the political prison camps. These delegations must include political prison survivors like myself and other defectors.

READ: Defectors describe horror, heartbreak of labor camps

Only recently did they concede that “labor detention centers” exist, but solely for the incarcerated to have their lives improved “through their mentality and to look on their wrongdoings.”  [CNN]

You can read more at the link, but the concern I have about Shin’s idea is that the North Koreans would empty these camps through executions before allowing anyone to inspect them.  So this idea is not viable.  However, Shin also offers the idea of the international community preventing the free travel of Kim regime family members.  This actually seems more viable though many countries like China and Russia will likely not enforce it.  Does anyone else have any ideas on how to address North Korean human rights violations?

This is a sad story:

Song will soon be able to get a divorce. The question is, will his wife ever find out?  Song is a 49-year-old defector from North Korea who left a wife and two children behind him, took up with a Russian mother of three and brought them to South Korea. But so impenetrable is the iron curtain between the two Koreas that there’s no way of communicating. There are no phone, mail or Internet connections.

This area of marital law is a legal minefield for South Korea which is likely to be cleared in March when a law is enacted permitting defectors to obtain a divorce from a South Korean court. But not all the mines will be defused.

Read the whole story on your own but basically this NK defector worked at as guest laborer at a lumber mill in Russia in 1998.  He was caught saying bad things about the NK government and was going to be arrested.  So he hid within Russia. While hiding in Russia he met an ethnic Mongolian Russian and she sold everything she had to flee with him and her kids to South Korea.  She has now given birth to their child, but is in South Korea on a tourist visa.  The defectors wants to get married so she doesn’t get deported, but first he must divorce his wife in North Korea.

According to the article 223 defectors have tried to get divorced in South Korea, but only one has ever been successful.  Hopefully for the sake of his new family he can get divorced and married before the authorities deport his wife and children.  

When I read Japanese were boycotting North Korean products I immediately thought of, boycott what counterfeit US dollars and Nork heroin? However, North Korea actually does have some legimate exports to Korea besides the illegal variety.

But although the number of consumer goods bearing North Korean labels has visibly declined of late, experts on the reclusive state are divided over whether this means fewer products are coming in or they are merely being given another country of origin, including seafood caught in North Korean waters but identified as Russian or Chinese.

On the other end of the spectrum, boxes of expensive North Korean “matsutake” mushrooms were prominently displayed in the better supermarkets, selling for 10,000 yen to 20,000 yen each.

Now is the “Great North Korean Boycott” having any impact on North Korea? According to this guy it is:

Lee Young Hwa, a professor at Kansai University who is an expert on the North Korean economy, said the effort has had some effect.

The fashion set may breath a sigh of relief that, thanks to boycott pressure, North Korean suits are no longer easily found.

I have never seen any store selling North Korean suits when I have gone to Japan but I find it hard to believe Nork suits have Japanese clothing companies on edge. Next time I go to Japan I am going to have to buy me a North Korean suit just for the novelty of owning one. I would love to compare the quality between Itaewon tailors and North Korean slave labor.

It will be interesting to see if this idea of a trilateral summit between the U.S., ROK, and Japanese legislatures ever happens. It seems it would be hard to do with the ROK National Assembly controlled by the Korean Democractic Party which has many anti-Japanese members who would not want to be seen with anyone from the Japanese government:

This file photo, taken Aug. 18, 2023, shows South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol (L), U.S. President Joe Biden (C) and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida attending a press conference at Camp David in Maryland. (Yonhap)

In an April interview with U.S. magazine TIME, Trump suggested that Washington could withdraw the 28,500-strong U.S. Forces Korea if South Korea, a “wealthy” country, does not increase its contributions for the upkeep of the U.S. troops.

The remarks added to deepening security concerns fueled by Pyongyang’s unceasing push to advance its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and its burgeoning military cooperation with Russia.

In the face of the North’s persistent threats, Bera drove home a reassuring message: The alliance remains sturdy.

“I think it’s as strong as ever, maybe even stronger than it was a decade ago,” he said.

The lawmaker also underscored Congress’ efforts to advance trilateral cooperation among South Korea, the U.S. and Japan, which has firmed up against the backdrop of growing North Korean threats.

“We’ve been talking about the legislative equivalent of what happened at Camp David, where you could get members of Congress, leaders in the Diet and leaders in the National Assembly together to just reaffirm that outside of the executive branch,” he said.

He was referring to the first-ever standalone trilateral summit that South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida held at Camp David in Maryland in August, in a culmination of their three-way collaboration.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I don’t know if this is really a fight worth having for the Yoon administration:

The government is considering relocating a bust of revered independence fighter Hong Beom-do from outside the defense ministry headquarters due to his past record of collaborating with Soviet communist forces, officials said Monday.

Earlier, the defense ministry said it is considering relocating the busts of five Korean independence fighters, including Hong’s, from the Korea Military Academy in northern Seoul, sparking protest from opposition parties and the Heritage of Korean Independence, an association representing the independence fighters and their descendants.

The move is seen as being in line with the Yoon administration’s push to align closer with the United States and Japan in the face of growing cooperation among North Korea, China and Russia.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but of course the opposition party is backing keeping the busts of communist supporters in place.