Beijing: In a very rare occurrence, South Korea's intelligence agency and researchers reported that at least 3,000 North Korean workers staged protests last month due to exploitative working conditions that have led to "incidents and accidents". The North Korean workers from a military-linked trading company were reportedly fed up with unpaid wages and pandemic-induced lockdowns, said two South Korean government-affiliated researchers.
Although Reuters could not independently confirm the protests, BBC spoke to a former North Korean worker in China who claimed those working in some poorly performing companies were not paid their wages, and reported about a correspondent claiming to be an IT worker, who said that the workers are being "exploited like slaves".
Large-scale protests by North Koreans are virtually unheard of as China exercises near-complete control over the citizens with harsh penalties for dissent, and the researchers said it suggests these labourers are caught in a disagreement over their fate. China wants to send them home to comply with UN resolutions and avoid defections, but North Korea wants to maintain the number of labourers there.
However, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said they were "not aware" of the issue when asked about it at a daily briefing Thursday. The North Korean embassy in Beijing and its consular office in the Chinese border city of Dandong did not comment on the issue.
Dismal conditions of North Koreans in China
Pyongyang exerts tight control over its overseas workers, including seizing as much as 90 per cent of their wages for government funding, and they often face conditions amounting to forced labour, according to a report by the US State Department Trafficking in Persons in 2023. Wages are withheld for some workers until they return to North Korea, increasing their vulnerability to coercion and exploitation by authorities, the report added.
Cho Han-bum, a senior researcher at a South Korean government-run think tank, Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), said in an interview that North Korean workers at more than 10 textile factories in Helong, a city in Jilin province near the border, staged violent protests over unpaid wages. The wages totalled about $10 million over four to seven years, said Cho, adding that North Korean government officials paid several months' worth of salaries to the disgruntled workers to end the dispute.
"Now that the border is reopening, those workers want to go home. That's not easy now, given the North Korean regime wants to keep them in China to raise money for the government," he said.
Ko Young-hwan, a North Korean diplomat-turned-defector who now advises the South Korean unification minister, said in an interview that officials from the North Korean consulate in China had been sent to Jilin province and were trying to keep the situation under control after angry workers held some managers hostage. "They got violent, and started breaking sewing machines and kitchen utensils. Some even locked the North Korean officials in a room and assaulted them," Ko told BBC.
How many North Korean workers are in China?
There are an estimated 20,000 to 100,000 North Koreans working in China, primarily in restaurants and factories, according to the US State Department, to generate foreign currency for the sanction-hit regime. Most of their earnings are transferred directly to the state. Discontent started brewing last year, when workers started returning home to receive their pay after Pyongyang opened its borders, only to be told that they would not be receiving it.
Cho believes as many as 2,500 workers took part in the dispute, from 15 factories in Jilin province, which would make this the largest known protest in North Korea's history. Tens and thousands of North Korean workers remain shut out of the country, many of whom have had at least part of their earnings withheld.
A China-backed UN Security Council resolution demanded that countries repatriate all North Korean workers by December 2019, on the grounds that their labour was exploited to earn foreign currency for North Korea's banned nuclear and ballistic missile programs. At the time, Beijing said it had repatriated more than half but did not specify a figure.
South Korea's unification ministry said in a report last year that China and Russia were hosting North Korean workers despite the sanctions. The Russian government has said COVID restrictions were making repatriations difficult. The dissatisfied North Korean workers, dispatched by a trading company operated by the country's military, have been unable to return home from China for several years because of COVID border lockdowns, they said.
(with inputs from Reuters)
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