Men to the Battlefield, Women to the Factories: North Korea Earns Foreign Currency in High-Risk Areas of Russia

[Financial News] An analysis has found that North Korea is sending large numbers of workers to Russia to earn foreign currency, exposing residents dispatched there to the risk of Ukrainian attacks. Not only men but also female workers are reportedly being assigned to Russian factories and logistics facilities facing labor shortages because of the war.
According to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on the 17th, Russia issued approximately 36,000 visas to North Korean residents last year. That was about four times the number issued the previous year.
A large number of the visas were classified as student visas. However, sources familiar with North Korea explained that the visas may have been used to dispatch workers in order to evade United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions restricting North Korea's overseas labor and the foreign-currency earnings generated through it.
The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT), which includes 11 countries such as South Korea, the United States and Japan, estimates that between 15,000 and 30,000 North Koreans are working in Russia. Their average annual income is estimated at approximately $7,500 (about 10.41 million won).
North Korea is known to have dispatched approximately 15,000 troops to the war in Ukraine as it strengthened military cooperation with Russia. The exact number of casualties among the troops has not been disclosed, but hundreds of tombstones commemorating fallen soldiers were erected in North Korea last March.
Recently, North Korea has also been expanding the deployment of civilian workers to Russia, in addition to military personnel. The Wall Street Journal reported that North Korean women, in particular, are being assigned to production and logistics sites in Russia, where the prolonged war has caused labor shortages.
Another concern is that some of the facilities where these workers are employed have become targets of Ukrainian attacks. This summer, more than 20 logistics warehouses operated by Russian e-commerce company Wildberries were reportedly hit by Ukrainian drone attacks, killing at least nine people.
Russian authorities did not disclose the nationalities of those killed. However, North Korean women were reportedly working at at least one of the facilities that came under attack.
The workplaces of North Korean residents are also becoming more diverse. Some have been assigned to Russian drone production facilities, while North Korean workers are reportedly also being used at businesses requiring manual labor, such as caviar production plants.
Peter Ward, a research fellow at The Sejong Institute, told The Wall Street Journal, "Kim Jong Un's primary concern is not whether his people live or die, but the financial aspect."
[email protected] Yoon Hong-jip Reporter