Long live Kim Jong-un: how Russia helps the dictator thrive

The Krestovsky Stadium in St Petersburg, Russia will be one of the venues for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Photo: Godot13 (CC) commons.wikimedia.org

Limited rights

Together with China, Mongolia and the Middle East, Russia is one of the major labour markets for North Korean citizens. Reports from human rights groups and other investigators have revealed the conditions of North Koreans in Russia to be dreadful, often equating the treatment of workers to that of “slaves” or “hostages”. North Korean workers are active across many sectors in the Russian federation, from logging and construction to hospitality and food services. There is evidence that in some remote regions of Russia they live in Gulag-like labour camps. In big cities (like Moscow, Vladivostok, Yekaterinburg and St Petersburg), North Korean workers have better conditions, but are still under constant control of their supervisors and live with very limited rights.

North Korean workers with low-paid manual jobs provide constant cash flow for the regime of Kim Jong-un. The workers send a significant part of their income to the North Korean government. In the end, a worker is able to retain only about 10-20 per cent of his wage, due to informal but widespread deals between the companies they work for and the regime. This system of exporting and exploiting North Korean labour includes up to 200,000 individuals worldwide and generates approximately 2-3 billion US dollars of annual income for the regime. Many experts believe these finances directly fund the military budget, especially the missile and nuclear programmes.

Taking into account the secretiveness of the regime, such claims are very difficult to prove. According to the US State Department, there are around 30,000 North Korean workers in Russia. Putin himself once revealed a more impressive figure: stating that 40,000 North Korean citizens were living and working in Russia last October. This is a fourfold increase when compared to 2006, when this population was estimated at 10,000.

Football prep

A recent investigation revealed that at least 110 North Korean workers took part in the construction of the stadium in St Petersburg to be used for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The investigation, which was conducted by the Norwegian football magazine Josimar, and in which this author also participated, found that the workers were under 24/7 surveillance and had no days off. The workers received very small food portions and their basic needs were not met. One of them died at the construction site either from a heart attack or after falling from a high elevation.

Two brigades of North Koreans arrived for the construction of the football stadium in autumn 2016. It was the final stage of construction and a difficult time for the local authorities because of a scandal, which resulted in the hiring of a new general contractor and which delayed the project. The stadium was to be finished by the end of the year to host the first public events during the winter of 2017 – before the Confederations Cup. But four months before the announced opening there were still multiple leakages and other problems with the quality of construction. The project is estimated to cost the local budget a total of more than one billion dollars. According to the construction managers, there was no financing in the autumn of 2016 as a result of the mess after the change of the general contractor.

In September 2016, the city administration invited the bosses of local construction companies to the arena. Igor Albin, the vice governor, asked the top managers for assistance in finishing the project, either with money or with workers. There was little option to refuse. Shortly after, the North Korean workers came to the stadium. They lived in dormitories in remote areas of the city and were bussed to and from the construction site. Sometimes they slept in trailers near the work site. The North Korean workers in St Petersburg did not speak Russian or English and they had no opportunity to walk around the city or entertain themselves. They were kept isolated without any interaction with local residents.

One of the workers told a Guardian journalist investigating the issue that their aim was to improve North Korea’s defence. The manager of the construction company told me that they work for 600 roubles (10 dollars) a day and no more than 300 dollars a month. One of the sources admitted that the workers have to send two-thirds of their salary to their home government. If the brigade of workers builds a shop for six million roubles, they send four million to the government. From the remaining two million, the company provides them with food and meagre wages, while the rest is profit. The money that is returned to Pyongyang is done so through affiliated organisations, such as limited liability companies registered in St Petersburg. Many of them have Korean names and Korean owners. According to the Russian Federal Migration Service there are 3,500 North Korean citizens in St Petersburg. Groups of North Korean workers were also spotted at other World Cup construction sites, including Moscow and Yekaterinburg. There is no exact record of how many North Korean slave workers are involved in the World Cup preparations, but in Qatar, which will host the World Cup in 2022, it is estimated that 2,800 workers from North Korea are involved in the preparations.

A new era

The use of North Korean labour dates back to Soviet times and is reminiscent of the notorious Gulag system. The first North Korean labour camp was opened in 1967 as a result of a secret agreement between Leonid Brezhnev and Kim Il-sung. It was a time when Moscow fully supported the regime in Pyongyang. Even after the death of Stalin and the liquidation of the vast labour camp system, the Soviet state remained interested in cheap manual labour. The North Korean regime was able to supply that resource and, 50 years on, it still does.

In 1967, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea established labour camps in the Chita and Amur regions of Siberia. Approximately 15,000 to 20,000 lumberjacks from Korea were involved in the operations each year, supplying timber for both countries. The logging camps were in remote areas, far from the cities. Shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a time of cooler relations between Moscow and Pyongyang, decreasing economic co-operation. The new era of mutual interest can be traced back to 2014, when Kim Jong-un sent a senior member of his administration to meet with Putin at the Sochi Olympics. According to Reuters, Putin stated, “a further deepening of political ties and trade and economic co-operation is definitely in the interests of the peoples of both countries and ensuring regional stability and security”.

In 2015 the Russian Ministry for Development of the Russian Far East announced that Russian businesses could make trade payments in roubles through North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank. This deal has benefitted both large and small companies across the country. In the Russian city of Vladivostok (close to the borders with North Korea and China) the port administration employs North Koreans to paint ships. North Korean workers have been seen renovating buildings and even working in flats of local citizens. Local websites in Vladivostok promote the services of North Koreans to flat owners. According to the advertisements, none of them speak proper Russian, but they will not rest during the workday and do not take smoking breaks. The group of workers start their duties early in the morning and work until 11pm –when the law requires silence in residential areas.

What about human rights?

At the beginning of 2017 Russia and North Korea signed a treaty allowing authorities to directly extradite North Korean criminals and defectors to Pyongyang. Putin sent the agreement to the Russian parliament for ratification. This legislation can be regarded as a guarantee for Pyongyang before delivering more workers from North Korea to Russia.

Only a few activists and lawyers have tried to help the North Koreans overcome this brutal reality due to language barriers and the new “foreign agents” legislation. According to the Civic Assistance Committee, a Moscow-based NGO, dozens – possibly even hundreds – of North Koreans are now living illegally in villages of Siberia and the Far East. Olga Tseitlina, a lawyer based in St Petersburg, showed documents revealing the story of Kim, one of the workers who was taken into the timber industry in Russia. It illustrates how Russian officials co-operate with Pyongyang in order to find and punish defectors. Kim worked for food and payment of five dollars per month. He fled the camp without documents, escaping to the European part of Russia and met a woman there. He was arrested in 2016 when he went to the Russian authorities to apply for a residency permit, but was lucky; a lawyer and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees helped him avoid deportation.

Sadly, the Russian World Cup Organisation Committee does not see any problems with the use of North Korean labourers. Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, admitted that there is “strong evidence for the presence of North Korean workers at the construction site in St Petersburg” and the city administration acknowledged the use of North Korean workers at the arena construction site, but only after an international investigation. According to Igor Albin, the vice governor of St Petersburg, they worked with qualified personnel from various countries, yet he never mentioned the death at the construction site. The government of St Petersburg welcomed an official delegation from North Korea in April 2017. Both sides stressed successful co-operation and decided to increase interdependence, particularly in the construction sector. Human rights issues were not on the agenda.

Bright colours of the regime

With its active nuclear programme and record of human rights abuses, the international community considers North Korea an unsavoury regime. Yet Russian state-controlled television portrays Pyongyang in a different light. According to a series of reports by Russian Channel One, North Korea is a country where citizens benefit from socialism. The people are happy, equal and united. Russian media does not show the grim realities often seen in western media. In one report, Pyongyang was promoted as a competitor to Paris and Rome regarding fashion and style. Adding bright colours to the regime was not an isolated initiative of Channel One, but part of a united media initiative. A large group of Russian journalists and popular bloggers visited North Korea last spring. They ignored any form of state control in their reports and focused on the benefits of life under the rule of Kim Jong-un.

At the same time the Russian ministry of culture distanced itself from the documentary Under the Sun by the Russian director Vitaly Mansky. The film was produced in co-operation with the North Korean authorities and was meant to show a happy North Korean family. But instead, Mansky managed to show the real country – children at school in freezing conditions, dark streets and government officials urging people to smile to the camera. After several protests from Pyongyang, the Russian ministry of culture, which was a production partner, tried to prevent Russian cinemas from screening the film. Under the Sun was never shown on Russian television, nor was it promoted to a wide audience. Mikhail Shvydkoy, a film critic and former minister of culture, accused the director of endangering the lives of North Korean citizens who participated in the production.

Top-ranked Russian officials do not show explicit support for the North Korean regime, but Russian communists and left-wingers often speak positively about the country. One of the best-known public commentators on North Korea is Russia writer and columnist Alexander Prokhanov, who describes North Korea as a mysterious country where the citizens voluntarily serve their strong leader. Prokhanov romantically portrays the state as a model for the still disoriented, post-Soviet Russian society.

The use of North Korean workers is not a controversial issue for most Russians. This issue remains in the background, especially considering the presence of workers from Central Asia and other former Soviet states. Moreover, Russians themselves face challenges in the workplace, as some bosses force workers to perform under slave-like conditions: from brick factories in Dagestan, where people work for food, to human trafficking and sexual exploitation.

Along with the current working conditions, nostalgia and perversions of the Soviet past, many ordinary Russians perceive North Korea as an interesting experiment in a very remote land. With the growing number of North Korean workers present in Russia, it is possible to say that Russia shares not only a 40-kilometre border with North Korea, but also many interests and values.

Artem Filatov is a Russian journalist. He was one of the lead journalists in the investigation which first revealed the use of North Korean labour in Russia, published in Josimar magazine.

FIFA World Cup 2018, North Korea, Russia