Inside the Machine: How North Korea Ships Tens of Thousands of Workers to Russia — and Takes Almost Everything They Earn

A 50-year-old North Korean construction worker in Russia put it simply: "We're living lives worse than cattle" [1]. He is one of an estimated 45,000 North Korean nationals currently laboring across Russian construction sites, factories, and logging camps — part of a state-run program that a March 2026 investigation found triggers every internationally recognized indicator of forced labor [2].

The report, published by The Hague-based human rights organization Global Rights Compliance (GRC), is based on interviews with 21 North Korean men working at construction sites in three Russian cities. Its findings describe a system of industrial-scale exploitation: workers earning $800 per month for 16-hour shifts who take home roughly $10 after mandatory deductions flow to the North Korean state [2]. The program generates an estimated $500 million in annual hard currency for Pyongyang [3].

The Numbers: A Surge Defying Sanctions

Before the UN Security Council imposed worker-repatriation requirements in 2017, an estimated 50,000 North Koreans labored in Russia, making it the second-largest host country after China [4]. Resolution 2397, adopted unanimously in December 2017, required all member states to expel North Korean workers by the end of 2019 [5]. The numbers initially dropped — to roughly 10,000 by 2020 and perhaps as few as 5,000 in 2021, according to estimates compiled by researchers at NK News and the Sejong Institute [6].

Then they reversed. Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, military conscription and emigration drained the Russian labor force. Russia's unemployment rate fell to 2.4% by 2024, a historic low that left the construction and industrial sectors critically short-staffed [7].

Source: ILOSTAT — International Labour Organization

Data as of Dec 31, 2024CSV

North Korean arrivals to Russia jumped twelvefold in 2024 compared to the previous year. More than 13,200 North Koreans entered the country, with nearly 7,900 listing "educational purposes" as their reason for travel [6]. Current estimates place the number of North Korean workers in Russia at approximately 45,000, with projections that it could reach 50,000 by year's end [3].

Source: NK News, Sejong Institute, UN Panel of Experts

Data as of Mar 29, 2026CSV

The 'Scholarship' Scheme: How Sanctions Are Circumvented

The mechanism for evading UN sanctions is now well-documented. Rather than issuing work permits — which would constitute an overt violation of Resolution 2397 — Russian authorities register North Korean workers as students at language schools, technical colleges, and vocational training programs [8]. In practice, these "students" are immediately deployed to construction sites, logging operations, and industrial facilities [6].

The financial paper trail is equally inventive. Between October 2023 and June 2025, at least 76 Russian companies disbursed a total of 2.7 billion rubles (approximately $30 million) to North Korean workers classified as "scholarships" [9]. Some individual recipients received up to 250,000 rubles — roughly 66 times the average Russian student stipend of 3,801 rubles [9]. The payments were structured to avoid the appearance of wages while functioning as exactly that.

South Korea's National Intelligence Service confirmed in 2024 that thousands of North Korean workers had been sent to Russian construction sites under this cover [10].

The Financial Architecture: $800 Earned, $10 Kept

The economics of the program amount to near-total wage confiscation. According to GRC's interviews, a typical North Korean construction worker in Russia earns approximately $800 per month for up to 420 hours of labor [2]. The deductions are systematic:

• State quota ("Gukga gyehoekbun"): $600 to $850 per month, paid directly to the North Korean government. Workers described this obligation as non-negotiable — owed "no matter what … dead or alive," as one interviewee said [2].
• Travel debt repayment: Workers must reimburse the cost of their transit to Russia, typically spread across several months [2].
• Living expenses: Charges for communal housing, even when that housing consists of unheated shipping containers [1].
• "Loyalty funds": Additional levies earmarked for specific state projects, including a 10,000-home construction initiative in Pyongyang [11].

Source: Global Rights Compliance

Data as of Mar 29, 2026CSV

After all deductions, workers reported taking home as little as $10 per month [2]. When shortfalls occur — because of injuries, weather delays, or insufficient work assignments — the deficit rolls forward as debt, trapping workers in a cycle of bondage [2]. Failing to meet quotas repeatedly results in being sent home, which means not relief but blacklisting, interrogation, and potential punishment for the worker and their family [12].

At the program's current estimated scale of 45,000 workers, with monthly state quotas averaging $700, the annual revenue to Pyongyang from the Russia operation alone could exceed $375 million. Across all 40 countries where North Korean laborers are deployed — totaling more than 100,000 workers — the GRC report estimates total annual revenue at $500 million [2].

Coercion Mechanisms: All 11 ILO Indicators

The International Labour Organization's Convention No. 29 (1930) defines forced labor as "all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily." The ILO identifies 11 indicators to help identify forced labor in practice. GRC found all 11 present across the testimonies it gathered [2]:

Document confiscation. Passports are seized upon arrival in Russia and held by North Korean security officials. Workers receive photocopies, if anything. Original documents are returned only during Russian police inspections, then immediately collected again [2][12].

Restriction of movement. Workers are confined to their worksites and dormitories. Leaving without permission is prohibited. The physical isolation of many construction sites in remote Russian regions reinforces this confinement [1].

Debt bondage. The escalating quota system, combined with travel debt and arbitrary deductions, ensures that many workers owe more than they earn [2].

Excessive overtime. Shifts of 14 to 16 hours are standard. Some workers reported laboring 364 days per year [2].

Physical violence. Several workers described beatings. In one documented case, a worker was beaten so severely he could not work for two weeks [2].

Surveillance. North Korean security personnel are embedded within worker groups. Informants monitor fellow laborers and report infractions — including browsing the internet or watching foreign media — to handlers [1][12].

Collective punishment. Workers are specifically selected for overseas assignments based on the presence of family members — spouses, children, elderly parents — who serve as de facto hostages. Disobedience or defection attempts trigger consequences for relatives in North Korea [2][12].

Deceptive recruitment. Workers are promised wages and conditions that bear no resemblance to reality. Many do not know who their actual employer is in Russia [1].

Abusive living conditions. Overcrowded shipping containers without heating, infested with cockroaches and bedbugs. Workers reported being allowed to shower once or twice per year [2].

Russia's Legal Obligations — and the Absence of Consequences

Russia is a signatory to ILO Convention No. 105, which prohibits the use of forced labor. It voted in favor of UN Security Council Resolution 2397, which requires the repatriation of all North Korean overseas workers [5]. It has complied with neither obligation.

As early as April 2020, Russia's own Ministry of Internal Affairs listed 753 North Koreans holding worker visas — a direct violation of the repatriation deadline that had passed four months earlier [13]. A UN Panel of Experts subsequently documented that North Korea's Munitions Industry Department likely maintained IT worker groups in Vladivostok past the December 2019 deadline [13].

The diplomatic consequences have been minimal. Russia and China have jointly blocked efforts to strengthen enforcement at the Security Council. No international tribunal has issued rulings on the labor program specifically, and Russia's deepening strategic partnership with North Korea — including the deployment of North Korean soldiers to fight in Ukraine — has made any bilateral pressure from Moscow on Pyongyang inconceivable [14].

The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned specific entities, including Mokran LLC, a Russian construction company, and Korea Cholsan General Trading Corporation, a North Korean firm operating in Russia, both designated for involvement in the export of North Korean forced labor [15]. The practical effect on the program's scale has been negligible.

What Happens to Those Who Try to Escape

The deterrence infrastructure that sustains the system extends well beyond Russia. North Korea's Criminal Code prescribes a minimum of seven years in a "reform institution" for defection, with the death penalty available for "extremely grave" cases [12]. Workers who fail to meet quotas or who display signs of disloyalty face repatriation — and in documented instances, have had plaster casts placed on their legs before crossing the border back into North Korea, removed only after arrival [12].

The 10-mile Russia-North Korea border is heavily patrolled. Russian border guards have historically returned North Korean defectors to DPRK authorities rather than processing asylum claims [12]. The few workers who have successfully defected typically did so through China, a longer and more dangerous route that itself carries the risk of forced repatriation.

GRC's report included interviews with former workers who described the aftermath of return: blacklisting from future overseas assignments (which represent the only meaningful income opportunity available to most North Koreans), extended interrogation, and in some cases, detention of family members [2].

The 'Voluntary' Question: Agency Within Coercion

Academic researchers and some defector accounts complicate the framing of the program as pure coercion at the point of recruitment. The Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, drawing on interviews with former laborers and program administrators, found that as market activity replaced North Korea's collapsed Public Distribution System, overseas labor assignments became sought-after positions [16]. Workers bribed officials for the chance to be selected, viewing even the exploitative terms as preferable to conditions at home [16].

Andrei Lankov, a Korea specialist at Kookmin University and longtime observer of North Korean society, has argued that overseas workers — despite the extreme extraction they face — access goods, information, and a degree of economic activity unavailable inside North Korea [17]. A worker who returns after a three-year Russian assignment with even a few hundred dollars in savings occupies a materially different position than one who never left.

This does not make the arrangement voluntary in any meaningful legal sense. The ILO's framework is clear: consent obtained through deception, or maintained through penalty, does not constitute free choice. But the research suggests that the recruitment pipeline is sustained in part by the rational calculations of individuals operating under extreme constraint — a reality that matters for designing effective interventions, even if it does not diminish the program's fundamental illegality.

Supply Chain Exposure and Third-Party Accountability

The question of which companies and countries benefit from North Korean labor in Russia remains difficult to answer with precision. Workers often do not know the identity of their ultimate employer, as North Korean intermediary firms subcontract to Russian companies that may themselves be subcontractors on larger projects [1][18].

The U.S. Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) requires companies to demonstrate with "clear and convincing evidence" that their supply chains are free of North Korean labor [19]. In practice, auditing compliance is difficult: companies use layers of subcontractors to obscure worker nationalities, and the documentation needed to verify identities is often unavailable or deliberately withheld [18].

The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) has urged governments to extend sanctions compliance outreach beyond banks to all supply-chain actors, including construction firms operating in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa, where North Korean labor has also been documented [18]. To date, no major multinational corporation has publicly acknowledged supply-chain exposure to North Korean labor in Russia, and independent audits of Russian construction projects remain rare given the current geopolitical climate.

Comparison: An Extreme Point on a Continuum

State-facilitated labor export is not unique to North Korea. The Philippines has operated an overseas worker program since the 1970s, deploying millions of workers to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries under conditions that frequently involve recruitment fee debt, wage theft, and restricted movement under the kafala sponsorship system [20]. Nepal's labor export pipeline to the Gulf has produced similar patterns of exploitation [21].

The structural parallels are real: in each case, a state facilitates the export of workers to fill labor shortages abroad, with intermediaries extracting fees that create debt bondage. The ILO has documented forced labor indicators in Gulf-bound migration from South and Southeast Asia [22].

But the North Korean program differs in three critical respects. First, the state itself is the primary extractor — the $600-$850 monthly quota flows directly to Pyongyang, not to private recruitment agencies. Second, the coercion is totalitarian in scope: family members serve as hostages, informant networks operate within worker groups, and defection carries criminal penalties up to death. Third, there is no domestic civil society, free press, or independent judiciary capable of challenging the system from within. Filipino and Nepali workers can, at least in principle, access legal aid, consular services, and advocacy organizations. North Korean workers cannot.

The result is a system that occupies an extreme position on the spectrum of exploitative labor migration — one where the distinction between state policy and criminal trafficking collapses entirely.

What Comes Next

The trajectory is toward expansion, not reform. Russia's labor shortage is structural, driven by demographic decline and the ongoing costs of military operations in Ukraine. North Korea's need for hard currency is equally persistent, intensified by international sanctions on trade. The two countries signed a mutual defense pact in June 2024 that has deepened cooperation across military and economic domains [14].

The GRC report recommends targeted enforcement against recruiters and employers, independent monitoring mechanisms, and the creation of safe exit pathways for workers seeking to leave the program [2]. Implementation of any of these measures would require cooperation from Russian authorities — cooperation that is, under present circumstances, not forthcoming.

What remains are the testimonies of the workers themselves. "Working like a cow, earning nothing," one told interviewers [1]. The phrase captures both the material reality of the program and the gap between international law and its enforcement.