North Korea’s 100,000 Overseas Workers Generate ‘$7 Billion’ in Foreign Currency... Build Russian Drones and Lose 90% of Their Wages

[Financial News] An international investigation has found that North Korea has dispatched as many as 100,000 workers overseas, generating more than 1 trillion won in illicit foreign currency annually, and has also deployed them to Russian military drone and weapons factories. The vast sums earned by the workers are reportedly being diverted in full to North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development programs.
On the 16th, the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT), comprising 11 countries including South Korea, the United States and Japan, released its third report on North Korea’s overseas worker deployments. The MSMT is a monitoring body established to fill the gap left by the UN Security Council Panel of Experts on sanctions against North Korea, which was dissolved this year. According to the report, an estimated 35,600 to 101,280 North Korean workers are currently staying in at least 17 countries worldwide. The revenue they generated last year was estimated at $450 million to $800 million, or approximately 600 billion to 1.07 trillion won.

China and Russia are home to the largest numbers of North Korean workers. In particular, the number deployed to Russia surged after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, with between 15,000 and 30,000 currently staying there. Beyond ordinary construction and logging sites, North Korean workers have been sent to key military equipment production facilities, including military drone and weapons factories and steel-processing plants in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Russia. They have also been confirmed to have participated in reconstruction projects near the Russia-Ukraine border. Russia even amended its laws to facilitate the workers’ income-generating activities, and more than 98% of visas issued to North Koreans last year were ‘study visas.’ The workers were disguised as students and deployed to work sites.
In China, where up to 70,000 North Korean workers have been deployed, they are reportedly engaged mainly in labor-intensive industries such as garment and seafood processing, particularly in border areas including Liaoning Province, as well as in the IT sector. Signs were also detected that approximately 10,000 workers were newly dispatched to China between January last year and January this year. In addition, large numbers of North Korean workers in Africa and Southeast Asia are reportedly being mobilized to earn foreign currency in the medical, construction and IT sectors.

However, the workers’ lives were found to be subject to a system of systematic exploitation. North Korean authorities forcibly confiscate 80% to 90% of the wages they earn. In some cases, the amount confiscated exceeds their actual income, creating the absurd situation in which workers end up owing money to the North Korean authorities. North Korean workers deployed to Russia earn an average of approximately $7,500 per person annually, or about 10.17 million won, receiving wages up to five times higher than those in China. Nevertheless, most of their income reportedly goes directly into the regime’s coffers.
A substantial portion of the proceeds extracted through this exploitation was being used to procure military supplies through North Korean trading companies based in China and Russia, or remitted to North Korea through banks subject to UN sanctions. In a joint statement, the MSMT participating countries condemned the fact that "income earned by North Korean workers was provided to fund illicit nuclear and ballistic missile programs" and strongly called for greater international awareness and stricter enforcement of sanctions.

[email protected] Park Ji-hyun Reporter