North Korean officials are offering financial incentives to brokers who find jobs for the country’s citizens in neighboring China in a bid to generate much-needed foreign currency for the Kim Jong Un regime, North Korean sources said.
The isolated country has exported workers to China and places farther afield such as Russia, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa for years, but requires them to remit much of their earnings to the North Korean government.
Now officials want to increase the number of workers they send across the border to China, sources said.
“North Korea is sending its public officials who have connections in China to China in order to help export its labor force,” a North Korea source in China, who declined to be named, said. “North Korea is promising to give incentives to brokers who help find businesses that will hire North Korean workers.”
One public official offered the source a monthly incentive of 100 yuan (U.S. $15) for each North Korean worker he procured for job placements in Chinese businesses that hire North Koreans, he said.
“Receiving a 10,000-yuan (U.S. $1,500) incentive to find 100 job placements in businesses that hire North Korean workers is an attractive offer,” he said.
“Similar offers were not only made to me but also to other people,” he said. “It seems as though North Korea is in urgent need of foreign currency.”
North Korean traders who already do business in China are just as eager to help their government send in more of their fellow countrymen, said another North Korean source in China.
“Even North Korean traders in China are constantly on the move to help export North Korean workers to China,” he said. “They are actively working to find job placements in Chinese businesses so they can receive part of the commission as an incentive payment.”
Stiffing the Chinese
North Korea, however, often stiffs the Chinese who find job placements for its citizens in China by not paying them the full amount of the incentives it has promised, said a third north Korean source.
“Generally, North Korea weasels out on giving incentives after two to three months of scheduled payments for successfully exporting labor workers,” he said.
All the Chinese brokers can do is criticize North Korea because they have no legal recourse to sue officials who fail to pay them the amounts they are owed, he said.
Many Chinese businesses that hire North Korean workers ignore legal formalities concerning foreign employees, sources said. The Chinese government knows this and condones the behavior, they said.
RFA’s sources have estimated that about 50,000 North Koreans work outside the country.
North Korea, which has been placed under multiple and increasing United Nations economic sanctions for conducting banned nuclear and missile tests, has sought new sources of income by sending its citizens abroad to earn hard currency.
The labor exports have drawn scrutiny from U.N. agencies and governments charged with upholding sanctions aimed at preventing Kim Jong Un’s regime from getting the cash it needs to fund its illicit weapons programs.
Reported by Joonho Kim for RFA’s Korean Service. Translated by Jackie Yoo. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.