North Korea has dispatched 500 workers to China – a violation of international sanctions – in the first such deployment since the pandemic, residents in China told Radio Free Asia.
The 500 workers were sent at the end of August. Prior to the pandemic, North Korea routinely sent workers abroad to countries like Russia and China to earn foreign currency for its cash-strapped government.
All of that was supposed to have ended in late 2019, when UN Security Council Resolution 2397 – aimed at pressuring North Korea to end its nuclear program – kicked in, saying that all North Korean workers were to return home and no new work visas for North Koreans were to be issued.
But when the pandemic hit and North Korea shuttered all its borders, many of the overseas workers became stranded abroad.
According to a report by the U.N. North Korea Sanctions Panel of Experts published earlier this year, approximately 100,000 North Korean workers are still earning foreign currency in some 40 countries, including China and Russia.
Though Pyongyang ordered many of those workers home, this is the first time since the pandemic that it is sending out new workers.
On Aug 28 and 29, the workers arrived by bus in the city of Hunchun, just across the Tumen river from North Korea’s North Hamgyong province, a Chinese citizen of Korean descent told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
“A clothing company in the garment industrial park … hired 150 of the dispatched workers,” the resident said. “The company is run by local Chinese people. North Korea will start sending workers on a large scale starting from now.”
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According to the resident, among the 3,000 or so workers who returned from China to North Korea since 2022, most were recalled because they got sick or showed signs of mental illness.
“They also repatriated those who caused problems during group living in China,” he said. “They withdrew workers who could no longer earn party funds and sent new workers to China starting at the end of August.”
‘Huge demand’
But many who have been there since before the pandemic are going to stay and work for the companies they are already contracted with, he said.
“Currently, North Korean workers are dispatched to some companies here in Jilin Province, but it seems that they will gradually be dispatched throughout China,” the resident said. “There is a huge demand in China for young workers who can live and work inside factories and increase productivity indefinitely.”
A resident of the Chinese city of Dandong, which lies across the Yalu River from North Korea’s Sinuiju, told RFA that the 500 workers will be working in three different companies in Hunchun.
“There are several clothing processing companies in Hunchun, including the Border Economic Cooperation Zone,” he said. “About 200 North Korean workers were dispatched to Hunchun Rabboni Garment Co., Ltd. on August 29.”
Companies in China that utilize North Korean labor are relieved at the news, he said. They had been worried that once the workers return home, North Korea would not send new ones to replace them, but the new deployment is reassuring.
“North Korea workers are initially dispatched to the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province, but they are expected to expand to many companies in all three northeastern provinces in the future,” he said, referring to Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang provinces, often referred to as China’s Rust Belt due to recent decline of population and economic growth in what had been China’s most vibrant industrial region.
According to the Dandong resident, the region’s manufacturing sector is experiencing a serious shortage of workers, as many young Chinese avoid employment in rural areas and factories. North Koreans cost less and can pick up the slack, he said.
Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.