A new report from Global Rights Compliance details the toll of state-imposed forced labor on North Korean workers, serving as a reminder that the products of this labor often enter global supply chains, including those flowing through the European Union. More than 100,000 North Koreans are estimated to work overseas across 40 countries, with large numbers in Russia and China.

Global Rights Compliance interviewed 21 North Korean workers on construction sites in three Russian cities. These workers said that their passports were confiscated on arrival and they were forced to work 12 to 16 hour days, up to 364 days a year. While they receive wages of around US$800 per month, the North Korean government typically extracts about $600 of that-through mandatory quotas-as well as deductions for travel debts and living costs, leaving workers with as little as $10 per month.

The North Korean government is constantly keeping workers abroad under surveillance, including by embedding informers in the workforce. Speaking out or attempting to escape carries consequences not only for the workers, but for their family members who remain in North Korea, including loss of employment or housing, financial penalty, forced relocation, interrogation, torture, and enforced disappearance.

This forced labor is state-organized and state-enforced, and the profits go to the state. According to one estimate from 2024, the overseas labor program generated around $500 million annually for the North Korean government from non-IT workers alone, alongside additional revenue from IT workers operating under similar state control.

That revenue flows through global supply chains. A 2024 Outlaw Ocean Project investigation traced North Korean forced labor to Chinese seafood processing plants whose products entered supply chains across the United States, Canada, and Europe. One importer supplied cafeterias in the EU Parliament, bringing North Korean forced labor to the heart of EU law-making.

The European Commission should promptly publish implementation guidelines and a risk database for the new EU Forced Labor Regulation, which prohibits products made with forced labor from being sold in the EU market. These tools should recognize state-imposed forced labor as a distinct category requiring tailored due diligence and include North Korea's internal and overseas state-sponsored labor program in the regulation's risk database. The objective is not to punish workers, but to disrupt the system that exploits them and to pressure the government towards reform.

Source: Human Rights Watch