Kuwait among states for forced Pyongyang labor

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 29, (AP): Tens of thousands of North Koreans are being sent to work abroad in conditions that amount to forced labor to circumvent UN sanctions and earn foreign currency for the country, amounting to between $1.2 billion and $2.3 billion annually by one estimate, a UN investigator said Wednesday.

Marzuki Darusman, the special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said in a report to the UN General Assembly and at a news conference that the workers are providing a new source of money to a country facing a “really tight financial and economic situation.”

He accused Pyongyang of violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which it has signed and which bans forced labor. And he said that companies hiring North Korean workers “become complicit in an unacceptable system of forced labor.”

Darusman said more than 50,000 North Korean workers are currently employed in foreign countries, mainly in the mining, logging, textile and construction industries, according to various studies — and he said the number is rising.

The vast majority are working in China and Russia, he said, but they are reportedly also employed elsewhere in Asia, Africa, the Mideast and Europe. He listed Algeria, Angola, Cambodia, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Oman, Poland, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Darusman said civil society organizations report that workers from the reclusive Asian nation

earn $120-$150 per month on average, don’t get enough food, and are sometimes forced to work up to 20 hours a day, with only one or two rest days a month and insufficient food. Employers pay “significantly higher amounts” to the North Korean government, he said.

Former workers interviewed by the organizations said jobs are assigned according to the worker’s stateassigned social class with those in lower classes assigned the most dangerous and tedious tasks, he said. The exworkers also reported being under constant surveillance by North Koreans in charge of ensuring that they comply with government rules and regulations,