North Koreans tell the BBC that they are sent to work “like slaves” in Russia

Thousands of North Koreans are sent to work under slave type conditions in Russia to fill a huge shortage of labor exacerbated by the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the BBC learned.

Moscow turned several times to Pyongyang to help him fight war, using his missiles, artillery shells and soldiers.

Now, with many men from Russia killed or linked to fighting – or fled the country – South Korean intelligence officials have told the BBC that Moscow relies more and more on North Korean workers.

We have interviewed six North Korean workers who have fled Russia since the start of the war, as well as government representatives, researchers and those who help save workers.

They detailed how men are subject to “abyssal” working conditions and how the North Korean authorities tighten their control over workers to prevent them from escaping.

One of the workers, Jin, told the BBC that when he landed in the Far East in Russia, he was chaperoned from the airport to a construction site by a North Korean security agent, who ordered him to speak to anyone or to look at anything.

“The outside world is our enemy,” said the agent. He was put directly to work by building high-rise buildings for more than 18 hours a day, he said.

The six workers we have spoken to describe the same punishing working days – to wake up at 6 am and be forced to build high height apartments until 2 am the next morning, with only two days off per year.

We have changed their names to protect them.

“Waking up was terrifying, realizing that you had to repeat the same day,” said another construction worker, TAE, who managed to escape Russia last year. Tae recalled how his hands seized in the morning, unable to open up, paralyzed in relation to the work of the day before.

“Some people would leave their posts during the day or fell asleep, but supervisors would find them and beat them. It was really as if we were dying,” said another of workers, Chan.

“The conditions are really breathtaking,” said Kang Dong-Wan, professor at Dong-A university in South Korea who went several times to Russia to interview North Korean workers.

“Workers are exposed to very dangerous situations. At night, the lights are off and they work in the dark, with little safety equipment.”

The escape told us that workers were limited to their day and night construction sites, where they are watched by agents from the State of North Korea. They sleep in dirty and overcrowded shipping containers, infested with bugs, or on the floor unfinished buildings, tarpaulins drawn on door frames to try to keep the cold.

A worker, Nam, said that he had fallen four meters from his site and had “crushed” his face, leaving him unable to work. Even then, his supervisors would not let him leave the site to visit a hospital.

In the past, tens of thousands of North Koreans have worked in Russia, winning millions of books a year for the North Korean leader Kim Jong Une, and his regime short of money. Then, in 2019, the UN prohibited countries from using these workers to try to cut Kim funds and prevent him from building nuclear weapons, which means that most were sent home.

But last year, more than 10,000 workers were sent to Russia, according to a South Korean intelligence manager addressed to the BBC under the cover of anonymity. They told us that even more had to arrive this year, Pyongyang may have sent more than 50,000 workers in total.

The sudden influx means that North Korean workers are now “everywhere in Russia,” added the official. While most work on large-scale construction projects, others have been assigned to clothing factories and IT centers, they said, in violation of United Nations sanctions prohibiting the use of North Korean labor.

The Russian government figures show that more than 13,000 North Koreans entered the country in 2024, an increase of 12 times compared to the previous year. Nearly 8,000 of them have concluded student visas but, according to the intelligence manager and the experts, it is a tactic used by Russia to circumvent the ban on the United Nations.

In June, a senior Russian official, Sergei Shoigu, admitted for the first time that 5,000 North Koreans would be sent to rebuild Kursk, a Russian region seized by Ukrainian forces last year but which have since been repulsed.

The South Korean official told us that it was also “very likely” that some North Koreans will soon be deployed to work on reconstruction projects in the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia.

“Russia is suffering from a serious shortage of labor at the moment and the North Koreans are offering the perfect solution. They are cheap, workers and have no problems,” said Andrei Lankov, professor at the University of Kookmin in Seoul and a renowned expert in North Russia.

These construction jobs abroad are very coveted in North Korea because they promise to pay better than work at home. Most workers hope to escape poverty and be able to buy a house for their family or start a business on their return. Only the most reliable men are selected after being rigorously checked, and they have to leave their family.

But most of their earnings are sent directly to the North Korean state as “loyalty costs”. The remaining fraction – generally between $ 100 and $ 200 (£ 74 at £ 149) per month – is marked on a large book. Workers only receive this money when they return home – a recent tactic, say the experts, to prevent them from fleeing.

Once men carry out the reality of hard work and lack of remuneration, it can be overwhelming. Tae said he was “ashamed” when he learned that other Central Asian construction workers were paid five times more than him for a third of the work. “I felt like I was in a labor camp; a prison without bars,” he said.

The worker Jin Jin is still bristling when he remembers how other workers would call them slaves. “You are not men, just machines that can speak,” he laughed. At one point, Jin’s manager told him that he may not receive money on his return to North Korea because the state needed it instead. It was then that he decided to risk his life to escape.

TAE made the decision to fail after watching YouTube videos showing how many workers in South Korea have been paid. One night, he packed his personal effects in a trash can, threw a blanket under his sheets to give the impression that he was sleeping again and slipped out of his construction site. He praised a taxi and traveled thousands of kilometers across the country to meet a lawyer who helped organize his trip to Seoul.

In recent years, a small number of workers have been able to orchestrate their escapes using used prohibited smartphones, bought by saving the small daily allowance they have received for cigarettes and alcohol.

In order to prevent these escapes, several sources have told us that the North Korean authorities now reprimanded the already limited freedom of workers.

According to Professor Kang of Dong-A university, the regime has tried to control workers in the past year by subjecting them to more frequent ideological and self-criticism sessions, in which they are forced to declare their loyalty to Kim Jong and and record their failures.

Rare possibilities of leaving construction sites have also been reduced. “The workers came out in groups once a month, but recently, these trips have decreased to almost zero,” added Professor Kang.

Kim Seung-Chul, an activist based in Seoul who helps save North Korean workers from Russia, said these outings were more closely controlled. “They were allowed to go by pairs, but since 2023, they had to travel in groups of five and have been monitored more intensely.”

In this climate, fewer workers manage to escape. The South Korean government told us that the number of North Koreans that stop from Russia each year and arrived in Seoul had reduced by half for 2022-between 20 per year to only 10.

Mr. Lankov, the Korea in North Russia Relations expert, said repression was probably in preparation for many other workers.

“These workers will be the lasting heritage of Kim and Putin’s friendship,” he said, arguing that workers would continue to arrive long after the end of the war, and the deployment of soldiers and weapons had ceased.

Additional reports by Jake Kwon and Hosu Lee