Guemhyuk Kim* can’t remember the last time he had a proper shower. When the North Korean worker was sent to Russia under Kim Jong Un’s overseas labour programme, he had not imagined living inside a shipping container in abject squalor.
He is one among at least 100,000 people in the North Korean dictator’s programme forced to live and work under abusive conditions, including restriction of movement, retention of identity documents, physical and sexual violence, and intimidation and threats, a new investigation has revealed.
The 29-year-old North Korean from the capital Pyongyang says: “There’s no shower facility so we just clean off our face with a tap.” He was sent to Russia’s St Petersburg in 2024 for construction work of a stadium. He now lives 200m away from the site, with 20 of his countrymen sleeping in a cramped room inside a shipping container.
“We are chronically sleep-deprived from long shifts and brutal living conditions. The containers are infested with cockroaches and bedbugs,” he says. Showers are limited to one or two across a year, an investigation by the Hague-based international law foundation Global Rights Compliance revealed.
Under the programme, around 100,000 of North Koreans are sent abroad to work on construction sites, factories, and farms in China, Russia, and some African nations, experts say.
Reports suggest the programme has picked up pace in Russian cities despite a UN ban on countries accepting North Korean labourers. A 2017 UN Security Council resolution demanded that all countries send home all North Korean workers by 22 Dec 2019 to stop them earning foreign currency for North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.
Experts say North Koreans are choosing these jobs to escape their country, which have been called “the biggest prison on this planet”.
At least 21 North Korean nationals have confirmed the life-threatening and dangerous conditions they are made to work in to meet a monthly quota “no matter what… dead or alive”, according to the investigation. The purpose of these monthly quotas imposed by North Korea on its overseas labourers is to send as much currency as possible back to the government.
The workers said they did not receive any prior information about the conditions when they were sent to Russia for these “coveted and prestigious” jobs. Some even paid bribes to middlemen, which later trapped them in debt.
The workers said they were made to work for up to 16 hours a day, starting as early as 7am and going on till midnight, for 364 days a year for $10 (£7.4) per month, according to the investigation shared with The Independent.
“Every afternoon, I find myself calculating whether I can meet this month’s quota. The mandatory monthly quota, locally called Gukga Gyehoekbun, levied by Pyongyang is a central fact of life for every DPRK worker abroad. Most workers had never heard of it before they arrived. I came out not knowing how much I would receive. I just thought that if I went to Russia, I’d earn money – I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a state quota,” a worker said. DPRK refers to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the official name of the country.
One worker said he and his fellow labourers “led lives worse than cattle”. Regardless of extreme weather conditions, they had to show up in the harsh Russian winters without any protective equipment.
Any medical issues, like injuries or illnesses, were not only ignored but also seen as “problems obstructing work”, they said.
“One of the workers told me that once he got badly hurt on his arm but then all he was given to treat his wound was salt water, and he had to just either pour it or consume it. He also had to work immediately after the incident because he knows that his quota needs to be met,” says Yeji Kim, an advisor for DPRK at the Global Rights Compliance.
