The United Nations has placed heavy sanctions on North Korea, this includes North Koreans working abroad. When North Koreans are sent to work abroad, they keep very little of the money earned for themselves, and instead the money is sent back to the regime. It’s then used on the country’s weapons program, instead of boosting the economy and improving quality of life for citizens.

It is well reported that North Korean workers in the DPRK are working with Russian raw materials to make Russian goods, including uniforms for the Russian military. Now Pyongyang Papers have more examples of Russian companies that are employing workers from North Korea, despite sanctions making this illegal! This means they dont even need to move materials across country borders to exploit workers.

Worries of Human rights violations as well as breaking sanctions

In April 2024 the Russian Minister of Education and Science and the North Korean Minister of Education met and it was announced that more North Korean students will be granted visas to “study” in Russia. It’s expected that although some of these may be genuine students, a number of these visas will be used to circumvent sanctions and send North Korean workers to Russia. We think that these workers will be sent to work in clothing factories and construction, known to have horrible working conditions. The New Yorker has reported shifts up to 20 hours long and workers sleeping in unfinished buildings on construction sites.

North Korean and Russian companies named and shamed

At Pyongyang Papers we have been made aware that DPRK entity, Korea Ponghwa Trading General Corporation is working with Russian company Druzhba Limited Liability Company (ООО Дружба) to send 300 workers to their clothing factories. In contravention of UNSCR 2375 “Forbids member states from authorizing new employment contracts for North Korean workers.”, We suspect that student visas will be used to cover up the fact that the workers are being sent illegally, a tactic commonly used to circumvent sanctions. Druzhba are registered in the city of Odintsovo , a suburb of Moscow and their main activity is listed as the production of workwear. The General Director of the company is Litvinov Vladimir Alekseevich (Литвинов Владимир Алексеевич).

Ponghwa General Corporation has previously been involved in sanctioned activity in Russia; The UN Panel of Experts report for 2022 states that a Moscow-based representative of the company facilitated contracts to send DPRK workers to Russian agricultural and construction jobs in 2020 and 2021. As well as being a blatant breach of sanctions, this ongoing illegal activity will be harming those sent from North Korea to Russia as workers too.

Multiple companies exploiting North Korean workers

We are also aware of another Russian entity named Bridge Group LLC who are hiring 500 workers from North Korea (under the guise of being students to avoid sanctions). This is most likely only a small number of the true number of DPRK people being sent to work abroad in Russia, as we believe other DPRK companies are looking to partner with Russian companies hiring more garment workers, as well as workers for the construction industry. We will be looking at further articles over the coming months on this very subject.

North Korea citizens working overseas is banned under UN sanction resolution 2397 and all workers should have been repatriated by December 2019. Pyongyang Papers has investigated breaches of the resolution for several years and will continue to do with help from our sources. Recent reports indicate that thousands of workers still reside in China & Russia unsurprisingly, with many more waiting to travel as soon as the North Korean border reopens. For our latest investigation we looked into a number of companies involved in the exportation of DPRK labor.

Korea Namgang Trading General Corporation (NTC)

The Korea Namgang Trading General Corporation (NTC) is a sanctioned North Korean company that also uses the alias Ryongrim General Construction Corporation. NTC was sanctioned by the US for engaging in and facilitating the exportation of North Korean workers to generate revenue for the regime. Namgang are known to send their workers globally to countries like Russia, Nigeria and multiple countries in the Middle East. The March 2022 UN panel of Experts report detailed an entity called Korean Namgang Construction General Corporation (aka DPRK Ryongrim Overseas Construction Company) working with Chinese companies to send DPRK construction workers abroad. Pyongyang Papers wonders if NTC & the Korean Namgang Construction General Corporation are actually the same entity?

Pyongyang Papers has been informed that NTC also has links to a company in Russia called Stroytransgaz-Vostok (Стройтрансгаз-Восток) and are looking at a multi-million $ construction project to build a museum and theater. Stroytransgaz-Vostok is a Russian engineering construction company. The company is a subsidiary of the Stroytransgaz Group controlled by Gennedy Timchenko (Геннадий Тимченко) through his Volga group. Timchenko is known to be close friends with Vladimir Putin and has faced multiple sanctions from the US due to being a member of the Russian leadership inner circle. He has also had assets frozen due to the war on Ukraine. The Stroytransgaz Group has had previous contracts to build museums and theaters and has also been included in the contract to build a cultural center to build ties with Korea, China, and Japan.

Current construction of the cultural center in Vladivostok – Stroytransgaz

Other Russian companies employing North Korean workers

Stroytransgaz-Vostok isn’t the only company in Russia that North Korean workers are sent to – Russian companies that have completed contracts and have employed hundreds of DPRK workers in Russian clothing factories include:

  • Hoebul Company
  • Arovana
  • Russi (Chinamo)
  • Ratulango Clothing Company
  • Unistore Company
  • Energokontakt Company

We are still investigating the companies listed above and would be interested in any additional information available surrounding involvement with DPRK sanction breaking. These companies are located in Moscow, St Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Vladivostok.

The North Korean company involved in some of these deals is Korea Unha General Trading Corporation (조선은하무역총회사). This trading corporation is described as being the largest clothing processing trading company in North Korea. It has 110 factories and even owns its own trading ships! They are known to export clothing, raw materials for the textile and shoe industry, grain, gasoline, diesel oil & North Korean labor!

Countries like Russia and China continue to disobey sanctions and provide the North Korean regime with a constant flow of revenue which is used to fund the nuclear and ballistic weapons program. North Korea continues to launch and test its missiles at an alarming rate. Countries helping fund the regime need to be held accountable to help stop the regime from exploiting its own citizens. If you have any information about North Korean workers in Russian factories, or any of the companies named in this article, please do get in touch through the contact us page.