In the past, our team here at Pyongyang Papers have published multiple reports about the North Korean workers abroad; sent to places such as China and Russia to generate vital foreign revenue to keep the Pyongyang regime afloat and fund Kim Jong Un’s weapons program. This is in direct contravention of the UN Security Council resolutions. With help of close allies, the regime is brazenly continuing with the monetization of North Korean workforce through overseas work programs. How Russian firms like Rasonkontrans and Yav-Stroi Construction company exploited North Korean workers in the past is well documented . This time, our investigations have uncoverd some new plans between North Korean and Russian companies to exploit skilled labor force.

Company changes name and continues to break sanctions

It would appear that the Russian Based elements of DPRK Jihyang Associated Corporation is negotiating a decade long contract to dispatch hundreds of skilled North Korean laborers to Valdivostok on behalf of other DPRK-based companies, to work in construction and shipbuilding industries. The Jihyang Associated Corporation which, according to one Security Council Report, changed its name from Green Pine Associated Corporation in 2019, has a track record of evading UN sanctions and conducting business overseas . According to US Treasury, Jihyang Associated Corporation in the past has been responsible for approximately half of DPRK arms and related material exports, in particular maritime military equipment and vehicles. But this UN sanctioned, Reconnaissance General Bureau front is now possibley shifting some of its focus to exporting North Korean workers.

We have uncovered that one of the Russian companies that is negotiating with the Jihyang Associated Corporation is, Livadia Ship Repair and Shipbuilding Plant. The Vladivostok based company which is part of Dobroflot Group was previously reported to have expressed interest in recruiting skilled workers from countries like Bangladesh. However, the offer of cheap North Korean labor must be too lucrative for the Russian ship building firm to pass on. Livadia, a key player in Russian shipbuilding industries may also be under pressure to deliver ships and other maritime vessels to support the Russian war effort in the Ukraine.

The second North Korean Company involved in the negotiations is Songchongang Trading Corporation. The evidence suggests they are discussing providing skilled workers to Montazhno-Stroitelnoe Upravlenie-7 (MSU-7) , a Moscow based construction company that specializes in bridges and tunnels. It is unclear at this stage what specific skills the North Korean workers will bring to MSU-7 projects but online resources points to Songchonang having some expertise in electrical and mechanical engineering. Interestingly the MSU-7, has a sub division based in the Donetsk region. It is possible the scheme being drafted is a means of recruiting North Korean workers to help to rebuild war torn parts in the occupied Ukrainian territory. Is this the first step towards us seeing North Korean military directly getting involved in the war?

Rebuilding efforts after impact of war

UN Security council-imposed sanctions in 2017 prohibiting member countries from providing work authorizations for DPRK nationals and to repatriate all nationals earning income overseas by 22 Dec 2019, with aim to restrict the revenue streams for the regime. However, with the war with Ukraine in full flow and the country in a wartime economic footing, it seems the Russian companies are eager to exploit the cheap North Korean skilled workers. Early this year, there were news outlets reported the arrival of around 300 North Korean workers in Vladivostok. There are also reports of Russians and the Regime using North Korean workers for the rebuilding efforts in areas such as Donbas where the Russian armed forces has made significant gains.

The North Korean workers has a reputation for being hard working and obedient with regime appointed management teams policing the workers on behalf of the employers . Although they deal with any form of dissent strictly, Livadia and MSU-7 should take note of the reports of rioting among North Korean laborers in China earlier this year over unpaid wage disputes . There is only so far you can push an enslaved workforce before they are likely to push back!

Please get in contact with us at Pyongyang Papers if you can shed any light on these Russian companies and the DPRK workers being exploited there.

The DPRK are well known for their dishonest, provocative and non-conforming nature. So its comes as no surprise that when Russia invaded Ukraine, a decision condemned by the world, Kim Jong Un publicly declared his support for Moscow.

Pyongyang Papers have been made aware of another sanctioned DPRK labor deal involving construction workers in Russia. This is not the first time we have investigated a deal of this nature – you can read our previous article here.

Perhaps surprisingly, Russia and North Korea have never had significant relationship. The DPRK is economically dependent on China, which currently accounts for over 90 percent of its total trade volume as well as most food and energy imports. Despite this economic dependence there is reportedly deep distrust between the two nations. China’s attempts to assert dominance over North Korea along with the North Korean regimes efforts to guard against Chinese influence have long generated tension between the two countries. Russia’s stance has always been to follow China’s lead, supporting the DPRK when they do, not supporting them when they don’t.

Pyongyang & Moscow

However, Russia needs help in the form of weapons. The EU have imposed unprecedented sanctions against Russia in response to the war of aggression against Ukraine. These sanctions include visa measures, individual sanctions and economic sanctions including huge restrictions on the imports and exports between the EU and Russia. Which is why Russia is seeking an allegiance with the DPRK. The DPRK welcome this allegiance with open arms as it provides many benefits. Not only will a weapons deal with Russia help boost the ever flailing economy … it will also further antagonize the fraught tensions with the western world. A great result for Kim Jong Un!

In August 2023, Kim made the promise in a letter to Vladimir Putin that relations will be ‘further developed into a long standing strategic relationship’. He also went on to state the two countries are ‘fully demonstrating their invincibility and might in their struggle against imperialists’. This letter was followed by the recent summit held in Russia and was attended by Kim. Washington have warned Pyongyang against sending weapons to Russia, as this would violate UN sanctions that prevent arms shipments to and from North Korea – but breaking sanctions comes naturally to North Korea as we have seen on countless previous occasions.

Construction workers to Russia?

Our current investigation involves the DPRK Korea Sungri Chonji Trading Corporation and the Russia based KSK-Stroy Limited Liability Company (ООО КСК СТРОЙ) for the supply of 200 North Korean construction workers to Vladivostok and Khabarovsk, Russia.

KSK-Stroy is a construction company that appears to have addresses all over Russia, with each location specializing in different construction types. The Khabarovsk KSK-Stroy’s activity appears to be mainly based on the construction of roads and highways and the Vladivostok company’s activity is engineering communications for water, sanitation and gas supply.

North Korean construction workers

Our sources have also found that the Russia firm ANO Digital Platform solicited a substantial number of North Korean laborers for construction projects in Moscow. Arseniy Shcheltsin is the CEO of ANO Digital Platform and this is not the first time he has been involved in something suspicious having previously been at the center of a scandal involving internet campaigning for the party in power. Pyongyang Papers wonders what use Shcheltsin could have for construction workers with his digital background?

Pyongyang Papers knows that nothing good can come from an alliance between two power hungry dictators such as Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin who prioritize their own political desires over the needs of their imprisoned citizens. We must unite to rid the world of their intolerable reign. Please contact Pyongyang Papers if you have any additional information on the companies listed in this article.

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.

Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union (the predecessor state to the Russian Federation) and North Korea date back to 1948, shortly after the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was proclaimed. The relationship between the two countries continued even after the fall of the Soviet Union, with it gaining further importance when Vladimir Putin was elected President of Russia in 2000.

In the late 1940s, roughly 9,000 North Korean migrant workers were recruited by the Soviet government to work in state-owned fisheries on Sakhalin, with a further 25,000 workers following suit in the 1950s. A secret agreement between country rulers (Leonid Brezhnev and Kim Il Sung) saw a second wave in the 1960s, consisting mainly of criminals or political prisoners. The flow of workers from North Korea to Sakhalin continues to this day, as reported in our previous article.

By the mid-2000s, masses of North Koreans were still entering Russia on work visas to try to escape their poverty-stricken homeland. Often compared to slave labor by outsiders due to the relentless working hours and poor living conditions, on the contrary North Koreans view the chance to work in Russia as a lifeline for both themselves and their families.

Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin meet for the first time in 2019 in Vladivostock

Slave labor?

According to Russia’s labor ministry, North Koreans are paid on average $415 per month, 40% less than the average salary in Russia. With recent reports suggesting a sudden hike, up to 70% of these wages earned by the workers are reportedly seized as ‘loyalty payments’ by the regime, to help prop up the government and its falling economy. This leaves the workers with even less money than usual to cover their living costs and to help support their families back home. However, due to the prestige and limited opportunity for North Korean citizens to improve their quality of life in the DPRK, it is impossible to find a job in Russia without paying a bribe, meaning it is often the more affluent Pyongyang citizens who get the opportunities to work overseas, with the underprivileged remaining poor with no means to better their future.

According to Ministry of Labor statistics, more than 85% of North Korean migrants work in construction. The rest are involved in a range of jobs from garment wok and agriculture, to logging, catering and traditional medicine.

Sanction evasion

However, Kin Jong Un’s persistent refusal to stop its nuclear testing program resulted in enforced UN International sanctions in September 2017 ensuing an embargo on the use of North Korean labor.

Unsurprisingly, in recent years Moscow and Beijing have appealed unsuccessfully to the member states of the UN to overturn the sanctions, in the hope to reignite the steady flow of migrant workers into both countries. Russia admitted missing the repatriation deadline, and here at Pyongyang Papers we know that Moscow’s claims of complying with the embargo are not wholly true- instead North Koreans continue to enter Russia to work via a loophole.

As North Korean’s on worker’s visas leave Russia, more enter on tourism and education visas, which aren’t banned by sanctions. During the first 9 months of 2019, 12834 tourist visas and 7162 student visas were issued to North Koreans, each rising about six-fold and three-fold respectively from a year earlier, according to Russian government data. With experts concluding that many of these visitors are likely working in Russia.

Students or construction workers?

A recent Pyongyang Papers investigation has revealed that a Moscow-based construction company was planning on receiving at least 100 student trainees to work on Moscow build projects.

BS Installation, LLC was founded in 2017 as a construction company with many projects under its belt. Also, plans are being discussed on sending student trainees to work on Moscow build projects for practical training.

Pyongyang Papers believes that Pyongyang will select the first group of 100 student trainees to arrive in Russia to work on projects in and around the Moscow area, following agreement between Russia’s SitiStroyProyekt, LLC, (СитиСтройПроект) an architectural planning company whose activities consist of engineering design and construction project management based in St Petersburg, and DPRK General Construction Company “Pyongyang” (Pyongyang). The agreement is believed to last until mid-2023.

Pyongyang Papers understand that this is based on a 2007 agreement between Russia and North Korea for temporary labor of the citizens of one government in the territory of the other to improve North Korean students’ professional skills whilst ‘studying’ in Russia.

Turning a blind eye

It seems the DPRK continue to ignore the UN sanctions enforced against them. Possibly partly to fund an ambitious building project under Kim Jong Un’s direction. Kim Jong Un promised in January to alleviate the capital’s housing shortage with 50,000 new homes by the end of 2025, including 10,000 in 2021 at the ruling Korean Workers’ Party.

It appears Russia is trying to turn a blind eye to the North Korean workers that continue to work in their country, but what will become of the regimes ballistic missile plans should we all continue to ignore the DPRK’s actions. Pyongyang Papers pledge to continue to highlight both countries and companies enabling sanction violations- as always please contact us if you have any information.

North Korean construction companies view Africa as a ripe target for generating wealth. The problems that this new colonialism causes, undercutting local building firms and damaging the international reputation of countries like Namibia, has not been widely reported.

Construction and labor teams in Africa have become increasingly important for the DPRK as a way of generating revenue for the regime. North Korean companies undercut local firms with cheap labor and poor quality building materials, and they are able to make large profits in this way, exploiting some of the poorest countries in the region and taking advantage of lax regulations in many African jurisdictions.

Pyongyang Papers interest in this little known area of North Korean activity primarily involves a construction company called GENCO (Korea General Corporation for External Construction). GENCO is more than just a simple building firm. According to the UN Panel of Experts Report, released March 2019, GENCO (also known as KOGEN) has close links to the Mansudae Overseas Project Group (MOP). Mansudae are a sanctioned entity and has links to the RGB and the the UN designated entity KOMID – the DPRK’s main overseas arms trader and a key funding source for the regime’s nuclear weapons program.

So what have Mansudae and GENCO been up to in Africa? Pyongyang Papers decided to take a look.

Guinea and Sierra Leone

The UN Panel of Experts report 2019 annex makes interesting reading when it come to DPRK construction activity in Guinea and Sierra Leone. Letters sent by the UN to a Guinean firm called GUICOPRES accuse the company of using DPRK labor to construct a military base in Sierra Leone. GUICOPRES, which denies contracting North Koreans with the exception of initial survey work, has also used DPRK teams to build the new Ministry of Justice building in Conakry – Guinea (not sure that bodes well for the future of Guinean justice). According to the UN POE report, GUICOPRES sources its DPRK laborers from a company called Korea South-South (also known as Nam Nam).

The Ministry of Justice building in Conakry – Guinea

Namibia

In September 2017 local newspaper The Namibian reported that Mansudae had built the country’s State House and Independence Memorial Museum in Windhoek, and had secured another contract to build a defense headquarters and a munitions factory.

The State House in Windhoek – Namibia

While commitments were made by Namibia to sever ties with Mansudae following the UN POE investigation in 2017, this commitment appears to have wavered. The Namibian quoted Foreign Minister Nandi-Ndaitwah, who visited DPRK shortly after the UN announcement in 2017, as syaing that ‘while Namibia remains committed to the implementation of all UN sanctions the warm diplomatic relations with the DPRK will be maintained’.

Namibian Minister of presidential affairs, Frans Kapofi, was also quoted in the same story as saying ‘North Korea is a long time ally, a partner in development, and an affordable contractor’. By ‘affordable’, Kapofi is acknowledging the fact that DPRK contractors are able to undercut local construction firms by underpaying their staff. Its likely that homegrown Namibian construction companies lost out on major contracts because of Mansudaes ability to use such cheap labor that effectively amounts to slavery.

Namibia spent at least $91.5 million on North Korean construction work between 2002 and 2017, according to the investigation by the Namibian. Its a huge sum of money that could have gone to building up and empowering local businesses. Instead it went to funding the DPRK’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development program.

Zimbabwe

In Zimbabwe, Mansudae was awarded contracts to build the country’s National Heroes Acre and Statue of the Unknown Soldier. A more recent contract to build a statue of former vice president Joshua Nkomo caused outrage as the DPRK is infamous in Zimbabwe for training the notorious Fifth Brigade, a unit responsible for massacring up to 20,000 people in Matabeleland during the Gukurahundi period.

The National Heroes Acre and Statue of the Unknown Soldier

Mansudae (MOP) is still very active in Zimbabwe but is clearly looking at ways to get around the challenge of sanctions. Clever solutions have involved such radical steps as changing their name very slightly. For example, there has been wide coverage of a registered Zimbabwean entity called the Mansudae Boka Design Company (MBDC) which has been linked to MOP and which has caused quite a headache for the Zimbabwean government. MBDC, which now looks to have changed name once again, had a Zimbabwean director but the two majority shareholders were North Koreans called Hyo Song Pak and Kyong Chol Yun. The Zimbabwean director claimed that the name similarity and the two North Korean directors were both ‘coincidences’. Was it also a coincidence that Kyong Chol Yun is the head representative of MOP in Zimbabwe? Seems unlikely to Pyongyang Papers!

MBDC has taken payments from a Zimbabwean government department called the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe, to provide statues and other artwork. MBDC has also taken payments from the Zimbabwean army and the police.

The Boka family in Zimbabwe seem to have developed very close working relationships with DPRK. In addition to fronting up the MBDC , Boka is also suspected of supplying Zimbabwean rag tobacco to DPRK, in violation of sanction prohibiting the export of luxury goods to North Korea. This trade is likely to have been facilitated by the Boka Tobacco Floors, a 50,000 square meter tobacco exchange in Harare owned by the Boka family.

The Boka Tobacco Floors

Zimbabwes involvement with Mansudae and the DPRK doesn’t stop with Boka. Given the DPRK’s historical involvement in mass killings in Zimbabwe, the ongoing government links are very worrying, as DPRK entities could be providing assistance to Zimbabwe to deal with civilian protests and unrest. It is one thing allowing DPRK to build your statues but its another to follow their lead on policing and human rights issues.

UN Reporting Deadline

The end of March 2019 marked the reporting deadline for all countries to account to the UN for the number of North Koreans working in their jurisdictions. This precedes the upcoming December 2019 deadline to expel all North Korean workers, as set out in the UN Security Council Resolution 2397.

With such a large number of DPRK construction workers slaving away in Africa (and elsewhere) for entities like Mansudae and GENCO, it will be interesting to see how many have been declared and how many have been expelled by the time December arrives. As always – get in touch with any more stories of illicit North Korean activity.