SEOUL, South Korea — A Russian network of brokers sponsored by Pyongyang has taken North Koreans to work in Russia in exploitative conditions and in violation of U.N. sanctions, some at factories that turn out items Moscow uses in the Ukraine war, a rights group said.
The neighbors have greatly strengthened military and political ties since pledging renewed cooperation at a 2023 summit of their leaders, while a mutual defense pact is a cornerstone of a partnership treaty signed the following year.
In its report, the Hague-based group, Global Rights Compliance (GRC), said North Korea reaps funds from the operation, taking much of the wages earned by its workers who are sent to Russia and made to stay under threat of retribution.
The group cites open-source information on the operation run by a Russian businessman, facial recognition technology to identify North Korean officials, and evidence gathered by its members posing undercover as prospective employers.
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“This investigation exposes a dangerous convergence between two states’ military ambitions,” said the group’s legal adviser, Elise Lauriot Prevost.
These were “North Korea’s use of overseas forced labor to finance its weapons program, and Russia’s growing reliance on labor to sustain its war economy,” she added.
Russia’s foreign ministry and the North Korean Embassy in Moscow did not respond to emails seeking comment.
The rights group said it contacted two Russians identified as key figures in the network, but only one replied, denying the accusation. It did not say whether the other responded.
Since 2024, North Korea has sent more than 10,000 troops to fight alongside Russians in the Ukraine war, as well as weapons to replenish Moscow’s dwindling armory while gaining valuable battlefield experience, South Korea’s intelligence agency has said.
To evade U.N. sanctions that ban member nations from hiring North Korean workers, the latter enter Russia on student visas in the guise of enrolling at colleges, GRC said.
Then they are contracted out to Russian employers, with brokers receiving a commission of up to 150,000 rubles ($1,860) for each, it added.
GRC investigators posed undercover as prospective employers and found the workers were hired at production sites, including a military rations factory.
The workers are forced to stay on the job through coercion and threats of retribution against them and their families.
One advertisement assured prospective employers that workers would not “run away,” the report said. Workers labor 12-hour days with two days off each month, it added, citing such ads.
After North Korea’s sixth and last nuclear test in 2017, a U.N. Security Council resolution put a blanket ban on the hiring of its workers overseas and mandated their return home.
Russia and China, two permanent members of the Security Council that voted for the ban, have since been accused by South Korea and the West of noncompliance with resolutions.
Such measures, dating back to 2006, banned the flow of goods, energy, weapons and workers with North Korea.
In previous years, Russia employed North Korean laborers in its far east while many North Koreans staffing restaurants in China sent home wages that were channeled to the state treasury, rights groups have said.
North Korea is directly involved in running the network supplying workers in Russia, with officials from its Moscow embassy identified as inspecting work sites for prospective employment, the GRC report said.
“These workers do not come cheap, yet little, if any, of the money paid for their labor reaches them,” said Dylan Carter, a GRC lead investigator.
“Instead, it lines the pockets of the DPRK state,” he added, referring to North Korea by a short version of its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
