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In March, we ran a post on European NGOs working on North Korea. One of the start-ups we covered from the beginning was the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea, formed in January 2013 by a group of young activists, journalists, academics, and North Korean exiles. They have now diversified into more research, including a new report on forced labor by Saeme Kim and James Burt.
The report—based on an unspecified number of interviews with refugees in 2014-15 in Seoul and London—touches on a theme that my colleague Marc Noland has been writing about for some time: the growing export of North Korean labor and the abuses associated with it (see for example here and here) as well as the issue of labor conditions at South Korean invested enterprises in North Korea, including within the Kaesong Industrial Complex. The Kim and Burt report ranges over a still wider space, however, as its starting point is the ILO definition of forced labor as “all work or service which is extracted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.” This permits coverage of a much wider array of such practices, including with respect to the adult population, youth and the prison population. The focus on youth and children opens up a relatively neglected realm of discussion.
The structure of the report begins with a detailed overview of North Korean labor legislation—which is ample but appears to be honored largely in the breach—and the international norms to which North Korea has itself committed. Most fundamentally, the report argues that the entire state socialist system—which determines where virtually all entrants into the workforce will go—is a forced labor system. This definition may be too expansive to be entirely useful, but it is a reminder that life chances are still a function of state diktat via the Department of Administration and Labor.
The abuses of the prison camp system are well known, with yet new stories heaped on the growing testimony we have from survivors. But the two remaining populations are particularly interesting: the mobilization of student and youth labor; and the growing export business. With respect to the former, school typically involves mobilized work effort, including the tradition of sending students down to the countryside to assist in planting and harvesting. But the report suggests a much more regularized process where students are drafted into activities as diverse as logging; transporting coal; repairing railway tracks; maintaining school facilities; cleaning Kim family monuments and public spaces; and quarrying. Needless to say, compensation is minimal—typically provision of some minimum food ration—and while justified as building character the work is nonetheless forced, exploitative of children and potentially damaging both to the education mission and childhood development.
Finally, the export of labor has become a major business, and an interesting tidbit in the report is the number of ministries involved in it. The General Department for Foreign Construction is chiefly responsible for the deployment of workers to the Middle East, but Russia is known to receive loggers from the DPRK Ministry of Forestry and Malta has accepted workers mobilized through the DPRK Ministry of Fisheries. You can easily imagine how this could become a racket for earning foreign exchange: as the report notes, “interviews and discussions with escapees suggest that wages can range from $300 to $1000 per year, but that the majority of earnings are deducted by DPRK officials and embassies or used for bribes by workers.”
Again, whether it is useful to think about the entire workforce as victims of forced labor remains an open question; it may detract from underlining those aspects of the system that are more egregiously exploitative than others. Nonetheless, it sometimes helps to see the system from a new angle. And on one point, we can agree with Kim and Burt wholeheartedly. “Forced labour serves three main purposes in the DPRK: It is a means of social control; a brutal form of ideological indoctrination; and a crutch for the national economy.” The report closes with a number of useful recommendations, including closer monitoring. But one on which it is easy to agree is within the grasp of the international community: to be particularly vigilant with respect to the export of forced labor. There is no reason why such practices should be allowed to flourish.
