Despite United Nations Security Council resolutions that forbid member countries to accept North Korean workers on their territory, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is sending more and more of them. In China, which employs the largest number of them, men and women work in restaurants and factories; in Russia, they work in logging and increasingly in factories; and in the Middle East, they work on construction sites and arsenals. As a skilled, cheap and exploited workforce, North Koreans are in ever-increasing demand.
According to a United Nations report from 2024, over 100,000 North Koreans were working abroad, earning the state over $500 million (around €460 million). China is said to employ the largest number, legally or illegally – particularly in seafood processing companies.
In another report published at the end of February 2025, the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), which aims to protect the environment and defend human rights, denounces the plight of North Koreans working on Chinese tuna vessels, based on the testimonies of a dozen Indonesians and Filipinos also aboard these vessels between 2019 and 2024.
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