eft: 40px”>Now, with many of Russia's men either killed or tied up fighting – or having fled the country – South Korean intelligence officials have told the BBC that Moscow is increasingly relying on North Korean labourers.
We interviewed six North Korean workers who have fled Russia since the start of the war, along with South Korean government officials, researchers and those helping to rescue the labourers.
They detailed how the men are subjected to "abysmal" working conditions, and how the North Korean authorities are tightening their control over the workers to stop them escaping.
One of the workers, Jin, told the BBC that when he landed in Russia's Far East, he was chaperoned from the airport to a construction site by a North Korean security agent, who ordered him not to talk to anyone or look at anything.
"The outside world is our enemy," the agent told him. He was put straight to work building high-rise apartment blocks for more than 18 hours a day, he said.
All six workers we spoke to described the same punishing workdays – waking at 6am and being forced to build high-rise apartments until 2am the next morning, with just two days off a year….
"The conditions are truly abysmal," said Kang Dong-wan, a professor at South Korea's Dong-A University who has travelled to Russia multiple times to interview North Korean labourers.
"The workers are exposed to very dangerous situations. At night the lights are turned out and they work in the dark, with little safety equipment."
The escapees told us that the workers are confined to their construction sites day and night, where they are watched by agents from North Korea's state security department. They sleep in dirty, overcrowded shipping containers, infested with bugs, or on the floor of unfinished apartment blocks, with tarps pulled over the door frames to try to keep out the cold….
The labourer Jin still bristles when he remembers how the other workers would call them slaves. "You are not men, just machines that can speak," they jeered. At one point, Jin's manager told him he might not receive any money when he returned to North Korea because the state needed it instead. It was then he decided to risk his life to escape.
Grim stuff.
One of the images they use is credited to Daily NK. I wonder why the BBC don't use it as a source for North Korean news more often. Yes, Daily NK stories are unverified – and unverifiable – and it's not an official news agency, but the Beeb are happy to splash news straight from Hamas all over their front page almost every day…..
Leave a Reply