Page 2 of 2 North Korea's living
exports By Bertil Lintner
salaries from the Russian
construction companies that have hired them, and
give the workers only food and some pocket money.
The bulk of their incomes are sent back to
Pyongyang, or used to buy computers and other
electronic equipment for North Korea's small but
burgeoning information-technology industry.
Many more North Koreans - the exact figure
is not known but is believed to be at least 10,000
- work under similar conditions in logging camps
in Khabarovsky krai (region) and Amursky
oblast
(province). The main camps in
Khabarovsky krai are around Chegmodyn and
Alonka in the Verkhnebureinsky region, in the
wilderness some 680 kilometers north of
Khabarovsk. In Amursky oblast, logging
camps with North Korean workers are found in the
north along the Yuktali, Yukcha and Gilyui rivers,
and along the Arkhara River in the southeast.
Fenced off with barbed wire, these camps are in
extremely remote areas from which it is almost
impossible to escape.
Some Russian logging
firms - now all privately owned since the collapse
of the Soviet Union and its communist system in
1991 - pay in cash, while others reportedly let
the North Koreans keep 40% of the timber they fell
as payment. Those logs are sent to North Korea by
train, and resold to China, or used in North Korea
itself, which has almost no forests left and
therefore no timber.
According to Lyudmila
Erokhina of the Vladivostok State University of
Economics and Services, North Korean workers are
preferred in the Russian Far East because they
work hard and never complain: "They were brought
up as law-abiding citizens in a strictly
controlled society." On the other hand, Chinese
and Vietnamese guest workers in the Russian Far
East are known to have raised demands for better
working conditions, and are alleged by many
Russians to be engaged in sometimes dubious local
businesses, often in black or gray areas.
The good behavior of North Korean workers
and their willingness to put up with harsh
conditions may have been selling points when in
more recent years Pyongyang began sending laborers
to the Middle East, where they, according to RFA,
mostly perform "low-skilled labor, such as
plastering and bricklaying. The North Korean
workers receive meager wages, even lower than the
Nepalese workers, who have been known to receive
the lowest pay of all foreign laborers" in, for
instance, Qatar.
"The entire wage received
by North Korean workers goes to the North Korean
authorities. In order to make some money they can
keep, they have to moonlight," RFA quoted a South
Korean resident in Qatar as saying. Thousands of
North Korean construction workers are reported to
be living under similar conditions in the United
Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
In the
Czech Republic, hundreds of North Koreans, mostly
women, work in factories producing auto parts, or
as seamstresses in the garment industry. According
to the US State Department's 2006 Trafficking in
Persons Report, the North Korean regime "provides
contract labor for private industry in the Czech
Republic. There are allegations that this labor is
exploitative, specifically that the DPRK
[Democratic People's Republic of Korea] government
keeps most of the wages paid to the North Korean
workers and that workers' movement is controlled
by DPRK government 'minders'."
Since the
formerly communist Czech Republic joined the
European Union in 2004, it has been compelled to
investigate the conditions of North Korean workers
in country. But according to the US report, the
Czech government "to date ... has not confirmed
that they enjoy freedom of movement away from DPRK
government 'minders' and are not subject to other
coercive practices, such as the collection of a
majority of the workers' salaries by DPRK
officials".
Soon, however, the North
Koreans in the Czech Republic may be going home
because of international pressure. No new work
permits will be issued to them, and those who have
permits will not have them renewed, which means
that by the end of this year there will be no more
North Korean workers in that country. The main
problem from the Czech government's point of view
is that, since it joined the EU, tens of thousands
of its own workers have left to seek higher wages
in western Europe, so foreign labor is badly
needed. And who could be better than hard-working,
compliant North Koreans?
But if they are
no longer wanted in the Czech Republic, there are
many other countries willing to hire North Koreans
- and, as long as Pyongyang needs foreign
currency, the export of labor is also likely to
continue.
Bertil Lintner is a
former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic
Review and is currently a writer with Asia-Pacific
Media Services.
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Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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