By Choi Sung-jin
Between 50,000 and 60,000 North Korean workers overseas remit up to $200 million home a year, twice as much as the 54,000 workers in the now-closed Gaeseong Industrial Complex earned, Pyongyang watchers said Wednesday.
And the bulk of it seems to land in the Workers’ Party to fund the North’s nuclear development programs, they said.
North Korea has sent up to 60,000 workers to about 50 countries, mainly those that have high demand for construction workers, including 20,000 in Russia, 19,000 in China, 4,000-5,000 in Kuwait, 2,000 in the United Arab Emirates and 1,800 in Qatar, experts said.
Given there are many more who do not fall into the statistics, the actual number may exceed 100,000. Since leader Kim Jong-un ordered that as many workers as possible should be sent overseas, the number has sharply increased from 20,000 in 2010, and their areas of work have also expanded to dressmaking, logging, health care and even IT, they said.
“North Korea has few items to export, other than arms and mineral resources, the shipments of which have become difficult because of international sanctions,” Yonhap News Agency quoted a government official as saying. “That forced its leadership to resort to sending workers abroad.”
Russia and China also prefer North Korean workers because they work long hours for low wages under the strict control of supervisors.
Jang Seong-taek, Kim’s uncle and mentor before he was executed, had been in exclusive charge of labor dispatch. Now, however, the cabinet, military and the party are competing to take part in the business, the official said, wanting anonymity.
North Korean laborers abroad earn $100-$1,500 a month but get only 10-30 percent of it, with the other 70-90 percent going to the secretariat of the Workers’ Party, or Office 39, responsible for managing foreign exchange earned by the party, administration and military, the experts said. This hard cash is used for nuclear and missile projects and buying luxuries for Kim and other North Korean leaders.
This means the U.N. Security Council should include workers’ foreign earnings in its targets for sanctions, the official said.
North Korean authorities are doing all they can to increase labor dispatch but finding it hard because many of their host governments are moving to regulate it, either by canceling and reducing dispatches or preventing the exploitation of workers’ income by officials in Pyongyang, the experts said.