Search Results for: north korea russia labor

Russia Wants to Bring In North Korean Laborers to Rebuild in Occupied Areas of Ukraine

It looks like the Putin regime is looking for some cheap near slave labor to rebuild the areas they destroyed and occupied in Ukraine:

North Korea could send workers to two Russian-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine, according to Russia’s ambassador in Pyongyang – a move that would pose a challenge to international sanctions against the North’s nuclear weapons programme.

According to NK News, a Seoul-based website, ambassador Alexander Matsegora said North Korean workers could help rebuild the war-shattered infrastructure in the self-proclaimed people’s republics in Donetsk and Luhansk. (……..)

He told the Russian newspaper Izvestia in an interview, according to NK News, that “highly qualified and hard-working Korean builders, who are capable of working in the most difficult conditions, could help us restore our social, infrastructure and industrial facilities”.

The Guardian

You can read more at the link, but Russia has a long history of using North Korean near slave laborers which is also a lucrative money making enterprise for the Kim regime.

China and Russia Reportedly Send Home Half of Their North Korean Near Slave Labor Workers

Via a reader tip comes this news which I am not sure I believe is actually true:

China and Russia have sent home more than half of their North Korean workers, likely tens of thousands of people, according to reports submitted to the UN North Korean Security Council sanctions committee.

Russia’s report said that the number of North Korean workers with valid work permits decreased from 30,023 to 11,490 persons.
In its report, China, the strongest ally of North Korea, said more of half of its income-earning North Korean nationals had been repatriated.

A UN diplomat confirmed to CNN that one-page reports from Beijing and Moscow were sent to the committee on sanctions, as required by a December 2017 Council resolution demanding repatriation of all North Korean workers by the end of this year. 
Reuters first reported this story. CNN could not immediately confirm the figures given and China has previously been accused of trying to find ways around North Korea sanctions.China’s report also noted that it does not wish for the submission to be made public.

CNN

You can read more at the link, but it appears that there is no corroboration of the claims made by Russia and China that they actually sent these near-slave labor workers home. If they did that would be another major cut in foreign revenue to the Kim regime.

This could also help explain why Kim Jong-Un is reportedly planning a trip to Russia to meeting with President Putin.

North Korean Workers Face Slave Labor Conditions In Russia

After reading this article about the slave labor conditions these North Korean workers in Russia are facing; I couldn’t help, but think that this sounded like the conditions many juicy girls used to face not too long ago in South Korea:

A North Korean slave laborer died building a soccer stadium in Saint Petersburg, Russia, for the 2018 World Cup, Norwegian football magazine Josimar reported Thursday. He was one of at least 110 North Korean slave laborers that toil at the building site.

Josimar and Western human rights groups are demanding that FIFA, the international football governing body, delve into abuses of the North Korean workers there.

Josimar found out about them when it was covering the construction of the Krestovsky Stadium, which was completed last month in time for the FIFA Confederations Cup in June.

The North Koreans lived in containers set up in a waste ground 200-300 m from the stadium. They worked at the site from 7 a.m. till midnight every day without a day off, Josimar said.

Their passports had been confiscated and they were under surveillance around the clock, banned from contacting workers from other countries. The site was surrounded by iron fence and barbed wire. A Russian supervisor at the site said the workers were “like robots” and looked deeply unhappy.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

President Yoon Orders End to All ROK Military Cooperation with North Korea

Other than managing the JSA, I don’t know why South Korea would need to do any military cooperation with North Korea:

 South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday urged an immediate halt to any attempts to seek military cooperation with North Korea, amid reports Russia and the North are eyeing arms and defense technology trade.

Yoon made the remark during a summit with leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Jakarta, after The New York Times reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may travel to Vladivostok in Russia next week to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and discuss a possible arms deal.

“Attempts at military cooperation with North Korea, which damage peace in the international community, should be stopped immediately,” the presidential office quoted Yoon as saying.

Yoon urged ASEAN to actively participate in efforts to block North Korea’s key sources of funding for its nuclear and missile development, such as cryptocurrency stealing and labor exports, and stressed the need for all United Nations member states to abide by U.N. Security Council sanctions on the North, including a ban on illegal arms trade, his office said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Korean Families Look to Find Relatives Lost During World War II on Sakhalin Island

This seems like an almost impossible task for Korean families members trying to find out what happened to their relatives that were conscripted to work on Sakhalin Island during World War II:

South Korean Shin Yun-sun shows photos of her 92-year-old mother, Baek Bong-rye, during an interview at her house in Seoul, South Korea Wednesday, July 29, 2020. Shin, 75, has spent decades pestering government officials, digging into records and searching burial grounds on Russia’s desolate Sakhalin island, desperately searching for traces of a father she never met. Shin wants to bring back the remains of her presumably dead father for her ailing mother. Japan’s colonial government conscripted Shin’s father for forced labor from their farming village in September 1943, when Baek was pregnant with Shin.

Historians say Japan forcibly mobilized around 30,000 Koreans as workers during the late 1930s and 1940s on what was then called Karafuto, or the Japanese-occupied southern half of Sakhalin, near the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.

They endured grueling labor in coal mines and logging and construction sites as part of Imperial Japan’s wartime economy, which became heavily dependent on conscripted Korean labor when Japanese men were sent to war fronts.

Families thought their loved ones would return when Japan’s surrender in WWII cemented the Soviet Union’s full control over Sakhalin.

Soviet authorities repatriated thousands of Japanese nationals from Sakhalin. But they refused to send back the Koreans, who had become stateless after the war, apparently to meet labor shortages in the island’s coal mines and elsewhere.

Moscow’s attitude hardened further after Communist ally North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950; most of the Korean laborers in Sakhalin had come from the South.

South Korea and Russia established diplomatic relations in 1990 and about 4,000 Koreans have returned from Sakhalin since. But people like Shin who lost track of their relatives long before then have seen little progress.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but there are descendants from these Korean forced laborers that still live on Sakhalin Island that organizations sponsor to visit Korea.

Could North Korea Be Planning A Space Launch to Cover for an ICBM Test?

It appears the North Koreans are being very open to make sure satellites capture what they are doing to drive media coverage prior to a provocation:

This satellite image, dated March 2, 2019, and provided by 38 North, shows key facilities at the Sohae satellite launch site, North Korea’s main missile engine testing site.

South Korea has been working closely with the United States to analyze a “very important test” that North Korea claimed to have conducted at its satellite launching site over the weekend, the defense ministry said Monday.

The communist country said Sunday that it carried out the test successfully at its Sohae Satellite Launching Ground, referring to its Dongchang-ri site in North Pyongyan Province, the previous day.

Pyongyang did not elaborate on what it tested but noted that results “will have an important effect on changing the strategic position of the DPRK once again in the near future.” The DPRK stands for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but this is apparently a new ICBM engine being tested. I have long speculated that the Kim regime could test an ICBM and then call it a “space launch”. They can claim they have the right to the peaceful use of space and never promised to suspend their space program. Plus this will give the Russians and the Chinese the ability to diplomatically cover for them if the U.S. tries to increase sanctions through the United Nations.

US Wants China and Russia to Fully Enforce UN Sanctions on North Korea

Good luck trying to make this happen:

The United States on Friday welcomed the U.N. Security Council’s united support for the fully verified denuclearization of North Korea and pressed China and Russia to strictly enforce U.N. sanctions to get Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused North Korea of violating an array of tough sanctions imposed by the council. He warned that ”when sanctions are not enforced, the prospects for the successful denuclearization of North Korea are diminished.”

Nonetheless, Pompeo told reporters after meeting behind closed doors with the 15 council members that President Donald Trump ”remains upbeat about the prospects for denuclearization” following his historic summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. ”So do I, as progress is happening,” he added without elaborating.

The Trump administration hopes that one day North Korea will be at the United Nations ”not as a pariah but as a friend,” Pompeo said. But ”it will take full enforcement of sanctions for us to get there” as well as Kim following through ”on his personal commitments” to Trump.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I have to hand it to Secretary Pompeo, he is doing everything possible to not be seen as the belligerent whenever the breaking point with North Korea’s foot dragging on denuclearization happens.

North Korea Threatens to Turn US Into a “Sea of Fire” After Passing of New Sanctions

North Korea’s propaganda department needs to come up with a new term to describe the destruction of the United States.  The “Sea of Fire” term has been quite over used by now:

Nuclear action or sanctions taken by Washington against Pyongyang will lead to a “sea of fire” engulfing the U.S. mainland, a North Korean newspaper said in its Sunday edition printed before the United Nations’ adoption of a new sanctions resolution against the reclusive country.

“The day the U.S. dares tease our nation with a nuclear rod and sanctions, the mainland U.S. will be catapulted into an unimaginable sea of fire,” the North’s ruling-party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said in an article.

The article was printed as the U.N. Security Council adopted its Resolution 2371. However, the piece could still portend North Korea’s fierce reaction to come over the international sanctions drafted by the United States.

In the article titled “North Korea should reverse its policy,” the mouthpiece newspaper for the regime said, “Besides completely dumping its frayed hostile policy toward North Korea, the only choice for the U.S is self-destruction.

“The more the Trump gang strives to break out of today’s quagmire, the more our military and people get aroused, giving more reasons for the (North Korean) republic to own nuclear weapons,” the comment also said.

“A strong war deterrence is an essential strategic choice of national defense for our people who went through a horrendous war.”  [Yonhap]

By the way the sanctions ban North Korean exports of coal, iron and iron ore and restrict the overseas sales of lead, seafood and labor.  Just like all the past resolutions these sanctions are only as good as they are enforced and I am very skeptical that China and Russia will strongly enforce them.