Unless you are a brave smoker of cut-price North Korean cigarettes, you’ve probably never heard of the Ryugyong Corporation.

We hadn’t heard of it either. But a new Pyongyang Papers investigation can reveal that this state-controlled company sits at the heart of an illicit global network of North Korean sanctions evaders, generating funds for the DPRK regime. This network includes Turkish and Greek tobacco suppliers, Cambodian front companies, shady North Korean middlemen and Chinese freight forwarders. As sanctions cut off North Korea’s other avenues for earning money, this tobacco network appears to be growing in importance as a way to finance Kim’s ballistic missile pet project and the lifestyles of North Korean elites. What more could an enthusiastic DPRK-watcher need?

Ryugyong Corporation Revenue Generation

As a company, the Ryugyong Corporation sits firmly at the center of the DPRKs revenue generating machine. It is an arm of the central government, subordinate to the Korea Worker’s Party Finance and Accounting Department (Bureau 125), which handles budget and accounting matters for the Kim regime.

Ryugyong imports leaf tobacco, filters and papers from suppliers, using a mix of cover companies and North Korean front-men, often working out of DPRK embassies overseas. These front-men source supplies from all over the world including Argentina, India, South Africa, Vietnam, the UAE, Zimbabwe and China. A recent NK News article highlighted the rise in tobacco imports from China. Once purchased, the tobacco products are typically routed through Dalian in China and onto Nampho port in North Korea.

Once the tobacco and papers have arrived in North Korea by sea, Ryugyong assembles the various components into cigarettes. They do this using cheap North Korea labor in large factories (one of the benefits of a slave labor economy?). Once produced, the cigarettes are sold in stores run by the Ryugyong on behalf of the state, where luxury goods like cigarettes and imported alcohol are provided for the wealthy and well connected in Pyongyang. Read Pyongyang Papers previous article on luxury goods here.

A selection of North Korean cigarettes on sale

Ryugyong’s main source of income comes from foreign rather than domestic sales. In addition to selling cigarettes to North Koreans, Ryugyong is also involved in a massive counterfeiting and cigarette export operation, generating large sums for the regime. They cover their cheap cigarettes with the names and colors of well known cigarette brands, package these up and ship them out of the country to unsuspecting smokers. Mostly, we suspect, in China.

Why is This a Problem?

Apart from the fact that this state-run counterfeiting operation puts a giant hole in the wallet of global tobacco brands (we have limited sympathy there) – why is this problem? Well the funds generated by selling these counterfeit cigarettes directly contribute to the DPRK’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs through Bureau 125. Importing or facilitating the import of luxury goods (like tobacco) into North Korea is also contrary to UN sanctions when it generates revenue for the regime. There’s also something of an ethical issue here. Without wanting to comment on the quality of North Korean cigarettes, we’d be surprised if these poorly made products weren’t also killing quite a few Chinese smokers at the same time.

Pyongyang Papers has looked into some specific parts of the Ryugyong import/export network that we’ve been unable to uncover thanks to a friendly contact in Dalian. Many of the threads we’ve unpicked through online research and ship tracking platforms seem to begin in Cambodia, where North Korean involvement in the tobacco trade has become well-known among the small network of suppliers there.

What Companies Are Involved?

A central hub of the Cambodia supply network is a particularly busy North Korean frontman called Myong Chol Min. Myong is the operations manager at a Cambodian company called Phal Eng Lim Import Export Co., Ltd (PELCO). Myong is also the managing director of a Thailand based company called MCM International Trading.

Pyongyang Papers believes that both PELCO and MCM are fronts for the Ryugyong Corporation, and that Myong is a key supplier of tobacco and cigarette products who works directly for the DPRK regime. According to company records, PELCO is registered at 91 Street, Sangkang Kampong Cham, Kampong Cham City, Cambodia. It’s also listed on www.tobacco1.com with the phone number+855966662595. We haven’t had any luck getting through thought!

Myong has reportedly been involved in hundreds of tobacco deals with PELCO and MCM over the years but we can highlight one in particular that illustrates the kind of activity that takes place. In September 2018, Myong used PELCO to set up and pay for a 50 tonne shipment of ML1-Grade tobacco leaf from the Sihanoukville in Cambodia, to Dalian, China. It appears that the containers were shipped from Cambodia on a Liberian-flagged freighter. From Dalian, as far as we can work out, this particular shipment was transported onwards towards North Korea on the DPRK flagged container vessel the Tong Myong 9.

Myong and PELCO have also been involved in deals for tobacco papers and filters worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. One of PELCO’s principle suppliers is a Turkish company called Tobacco Solutions Asia Limited (TSAL). Myong has had many dealings with TSAL and with Star Agritech International, its parent company, often liasing through a TSAL manager called Gokhan Akca. Acka’s colleague Afsaneh Gorbani, a sales supervisor at TSAL, has also had dealings with Myong and the North Koreans.

Myong’s globetrotting business dealings don’t end in Turkey and Cambodia. Another company that looks like it has suspect business dealings with Ryugyong is a Greek trading house called Zafiris Naxiades – Tobacco in Leaves – S.A. Naxiades, located in Thessaloniki, looks like it has a long history of trading tobacco and has an attractive image of their old warehouse on the website. Quite why such a venerable company has resorted to supplying the North Koreans with tobacco is unclear. We would guess that times are tough at Naxiades but Greece is one of the few European countries where the smoking ban hasn’t had much effect on cigarette consumption. They should be rolling in money!

Ryugyong is another symptom of a state that has lost its moral compass. We’re no longer surprised at the behavior of North Korean state companies – what is surprising is the number of international firms, like Naxiades and Star Agritech, that are willing to risk their reputations for what are, on the face of it, quite small deals. Given that these supply companies rely of a functioning international tobacco market to survive, it’s also surprising that they are willing to go against the interests of their industry to supply a company like Ryugyong, which has become infamous for the mass counterfeiting of cigarettes.

Who knew that Western Europe was a hotbed of DPRK diplomats behaving badly? The Pyongyang Papers didn’t. But we’re hearing more about shady North Korean affairs in Europe.

The first of these stories concerned an individual called Jo Kwang Chol.

Jo is a 42 year old North Korean posted to one of the world’s most livable cities – Vienna. Although not listed as a diplomat in the North Korean Embassy, his position is still endorsed by the Regime. Jo is the representative in Vienna for the Foreign Trade Bank (FTB) , a financial institution that was designated by the UN in 2017 for providing financial support to North Korea’s WMD programs.

A state-owned financial institution providing funding to fuel state-run WMD program – what a surprise.

FTB was established in 1959 and it has acted as the DPRK’s primary foreign exchange bank. FTB was sanctioned because it reportedly provided financial support to a number of other designated entities, including the Korea Kwangsong Banking Corporation (KKBC) and KOMID (North Korea’s main international arms trader). FTB was designated by OFAC in November 2013 and in August 2017 the UN followed suit and sanctioned it under Resolution 2371.

Cover companies and frozen money

Enter: Jo Kwang Chol…

Jo spent much of last year trying to get his hands on some Euros in a frozen bank account. The account in question was at Austria’s Meinl Bank AG, and it belonged to an FTB cover company called the Korea Ungum Corporation. Jo was trying to get the money out the account because the Austrian government froze it in 2012 after accusing Ungum of involvement in illegal money laundering. Jo was reportedly trying to get around this minor inconvenience by pretending to be an employee of Ungum and requesting that that a salary is transferred to him each year from Ungum’s Euro account for ‘services provided’. What these ‘services’ are we have no idea.

In our opinion Jo’s plan doesn’t really seem that well thought through. If we were him, we’d have another slice of the local sachertorte and try think up something else.

Diplomats & generators

Our second story relates to Paris: an equally nice place for a weekend away and an equally nice posting for a DPRK “diplomat”.

The diplomat in question is a long-time Paris-based official called Kim Chol Yong. Apparently he is stern man who takes his work very seriously at the DPRK’s Cultural Exchange Bureau. The 55 year old Kim (born 1st June 1964 according to paragraph 80 of the UNPOE report) has lived in France since 1989. In fact, as far as we can tell, Kim is the longest serving North Korean official in France. In that time, Kim has acted as the Regime’s procurement conduit in Europe – shipping anything from tons of toothpaste to heavy machinery.

Kim has been diligently taking orders from Pyongyang for years. Kim is named in the 2019 UNPOE report as being responsible for attempting to ship four generator units from China to the DPRK. According to the report, Kim took on a Chinese identity in order to move this equipment. The generators were seized by the Dutch authorities.

Images of the generator units seized by the Dutch authorities

Pharmaceuticals for the elite

In 2017, the Regime’s 1217 Research Institute told Kim to buy huge volumes of pharmaceuticals, pill manufacturing materials, and toothpaste from China. Kim subsequently posed as a representative of the Potonggang Pharmaceutical Trading Company in order to obtain these requested goods – including Rivotril for anxiety attacks. Why is a research institute buying toothpaste?

Our source close to the deal discovered that Kim was also sourcing pharmaceuticals for Rakwon 929 Import Corporation. Rakwon is the trading arm of the Ponghwa Clinic in Pyongyang, which procures drugs for the North Korean elite. It would not take much thinking to conclude that all these drugs Kim is exporting are for the elites and not the Korean people who really need them.

Kim is the longest-standing “diplomat” in France, trusted with highly sensitive information about the DPRK Elites and their private medical needs. This, coupled with Kim’s wealth of experience in procurement and his network of contacts in France, must make him an asset to the DPRK diplomatic community in Paris. With this sort of trust, clearance, and respect among the diplomats, it is reasonable to think of what other roles Kim full fills. At PP, we would be highly surprised if DPRK Intelligence Agencies don’t make use of Kim’s contacts.

Kim’s activities in Paris over more than a decade have provided a huge amount of financial support to both the North Korean regime and its ballistic missile program. Maybe it’s time for him to say adieu to the city of light?

Vladivostok! For those of us lucky enough to live in sunnier parts of the world it doesn’t sound like a dream destination. Maybe were biased here at Pyongyang Papers, but Vladivostok makes us think of dreary Russian icebreakers, cold wind and rusted fishing boats.

For North Koreans though, Vladivostok must be seen differently. Is it their land of plenty? Is it their paradise for earning money away from the sight of the international community? It must be. What else would explain the fact that so many North Koreans have moved to Vladivostok to set up their businesses.

We will come on to an interesting exclusive concerning a sanctioned company called China Silver Star. But firstly, why are there so many North Koreans in Vladivostok?

What we already know

Were not the only ones to have asked this question. NK News recently wrote a series of informative articles showing the North Korean presence in Vladivostok. While the numbers are difficult to confirm, Andrei Lankov from NK News suggests that between 15 and 20 North Korean companies have a permanent presence in the city. Lankov also suggests that there are around 10,000 North Korean laborers employed in the area, each earning between $500-900 per month to send back to the regime.

Obviously these North Korean laborers have to eat (and pay some taxes) but even at a low estimate of earnings this is something in the region of $50 million of revenue for the regime. That’s some decent income for buying more nuclear and ballistic missile parts. Al Jazeera’s 101 East recently published a documentary following the trail of North Korea’s secret money. North Korean workers are perceived as hard working, diligent and low-cost. Its no wonder they are popular with Russian employers. But then again, using slave labor has always been cheaper than paying people properly for doing a job.

NK News also reports how North Koreans have used the ports and airport to illegally move cash in defiance of international sanctions. In November 2018 a DPRK citizen was caught at Vladivostok airport trying to board an Air Koryo flight with with $192,300 in a shoe box. In October 2018, another DPRK citizen was caught with $180,000 – this time at the Pervomaisky customs post, having just got off from a cargo ship. While these two smugglers were caught by the authorities, these transfers are likely to be only the tip of the iceberg of illegal cash movements across the DPRK/Russia border.

Pyongyang Papers spoke to an employee at Vladivostok airport on condition of being anonymous who was able to confirm some of these stories. She said that security for DPRK flights was extremely loose and there did not seem to be much control of what came in or out on the regular Air Koryo flights: “you often see the North Koreans returning to their country loading their own bags onto the luggage conveyors or pushing through and around the security barriers” she said. That’s not ideal behavior when the rest of the world is trying hard to prevent the DPRK regime from earning foreign currency for the missile program or from buying luxury goods for the rich elites.

It seems that Russian enforcement of UN sanctions against DPRK commercial activity in Vladivostok has been a bit relaxed, to say the least. Or, as an article on the Arms Control Wonk blog puts it – it “leaves much to be desired”.

There seem to be systematic abuses going on. Alongside the large movement of money and the large scale employment of North Korean slave laborers, there as also several companies located in and working out of the DPRK embassy in Vladivostok. The same Arms Control Wonk article highlights at least three companies that are located in the embassy. If confirmed, this would be in clear violation of both UNSCR 2375 (2017) and UNSCR 2321 (2016), which bars DPRK diplomats from engaging in business.

So what else is going on in Vladivostok that hasn’t been noticed yet? Probably quite a lot! And this takes us back to China Silver Star.

From PP’s own conversations with Vladivostok locals we do have one new piece of information to add to the growing pile. This relates to a certain individual called Jong Song Hwa. Jong has been spotted a few times at the airport in Vladivostok and, according to our source, seems to have made himself quite at home in the city in recent months.

Why should we care?

Well, Jong is the CEO of an IT company called China Silver Star, aka the Yanbian Silverstar Network Technology Co. Ltd. China Silver Star reportedly earned millions in collaborative IT projects in China using North Korean workers, often disguising their true nationality from project partners. The common image of North Korean laborers hauling brick on a building site for low pay is still true, but these days they are just as likely to be sat behind a keyboard, advertising their IT services under false names and nationality on freelance sites like Upwork.

As a result of this activity, Silver Star was sanctioned by the US Treasury in September 2018 for “generating revenue for the Government of North Korea … that contributes to North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs”. Jong Song Hwa, as the CEO, was sanctioned and named in the OFAC listing alongside his company.

Clearly business must have become a bit tough for Jong in China following the OFAC sanctions so hes moved to Vladivostok. Maybe hes there to see some rusted fishing boats on a well-earned holiday? It doesn’t seem likely! Silver Star already has a sister company office on Ulitsa Klary Tsetskin in Vladivostok, known as “Volasys Silver Star“. Isn’t that convenient for Jong? It looks like hes decided to take his team of sanctioned IT workers with him from China to Russia and to begin his work again – motivated by the fresh sea air and bracing Russian climate.

As its probably the only place to get a snack near the Volasys Silver Star office we wouldn’t be surprised if Jong hangs out at the Pit Stop cafe by Klary Tsetskin (not sure who burned down the nearby pool hall). If you are stopping at the Pit Stop for a drink, keep an eye out for any Volasys Silver Star staff, and give them a friendly wave from all of us here at Pyongyang Papers.

North Korea’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) set up cover companies to smuggle heroin and methamphetamines into neighboring countries including China, Japan and Vietnam.

Why narcotics?

North Korea has a long history of narcotics production and export. The country began producing synthetic methamphetamines in North Pyongyang and South Hamyong provinces in the mid 1990’s as an appetite suppressant during famine. The drug was also given to workers to speed up labor on construction sites. Having developed a local industry for the addictive stimulant, the regime quickly realized that it could be a good source of foreign exchange.

Cover companies and use of diplomats

Research by PP has found that from the mid 1990’s one of the main vehicles for the DPRK’s narcotics trade was a Pyongyang front company called Sujong Joint Venture Co. On the surface, Sujong was a harmless trading entity that exported mineral water and imported computers. In reality, Sujong was a government-owned cover company for smuggling narcotics. The organization was also known as the Crystal Trade Company (“Crystal” …. subtle right!). Sujong was operated by the MSS (then known as the DSS) under the control of the military leaders. In PP’s opinion its clear that Crystal’s authority to operate came right from the top of the government. For those in charge of the DPRK regime, the immorality of shipping drugs like heroin and crystal meth were not really as important as the funds that could be raised.

Two key people involved in Sujong’s deadly trade were company president Song Tae Bin Song and manager Kim Yoo Chul. Under cover of mineral water sales, Yoo Chul traveled a lot to China, Thailand and other countries across South East Asia to coordinate illicit narcotics trading. By all the accounts that PP can find, Yoo Chul was a well-connected individual within the North Korean elite. He even studied French at the International University of Foreign Studies in Pyongyang and worked as a researcher at the Juche Research Center before joining Sujong.

The DPRK did not seem to be concerned that it was sending drugs into countries that it was meant to be friendly with. Even more shockingly, North Korea used its official, accredited diplomats to carry the drugs. According to a Vietnamese analyst who spoke to PP, in 2015 the DPRK Ministry of Foreign Affairs made plans to transport meth in to Hanoi to be distributed by its own diplomats. Profits from the sales would then be transported back to Pyongyang on official visits. Other incidents have also been well documented. For example, in 2003 Australian officials seized a North Korean vessel (the “Pong Su“) carrying heroin, while in 2012, a North Korean Embassy in Eastern Europe received a major drugs shipment with orders to sell the product and send the money home.

See the source image
The Pong Su leaving Sydney before being sunk by the Australian Military

Showing the massive extent of the illicit activity, a US Congressional Research Report from January 2007 mentions at least 50 documented incidents of DPRK drug trafficking in more than 20 countries across the world. Many of which involved the arrest and detention of diplomats.

Financial pressure

With low wages and constant pressure to generate money for the regime, North Korean diplomats often have little choice but to carry out criminal activity. PP knows that they don’t make much money – at one DPRK mission in South East Asia, the ambassador received $800 a month to cover all of the missions expenses. Others receive even less and resort to black market trading of cigarettes and alcohol as a result. While the regime has just recently asked its diplomats to scale down their involvement in illegal activities due to fear of expulsions, illegal smuggling remains an important source of funds.

With this level of financial pressure, and leadership that has no regard for human life, it is unsurprising that the DPRK turns to selling drugs like heroin and methamphetamines to raise money. North Korea made lots of money from selling these products into neighboring countries like China, Japan and Vietnam – who then had to deal with the human cost of the trade.

North Korea supplied criminal networks, terrorist organizations and other rogue states with millions of dollars of counterfeit bills.

Since 1989 North Korea has been printing fake US dollar bills on a massive scale using professional presses to achieve an extremely high level of accuracy. The fake bills are of such high quality that they have proved difficult to detect on the international market. This has led to currency fraud investigators dubbing them ‘supernotes’ (see article here).

The aim of the supernote counterfeiting program was to raise funds for the country’s nuclear, chemical and long-range missile programs. The initiative – which PP thinks is clearly led from the top of the regime due to its size and complexity – sits alongside a number of other international criminal fundraising schemes the DPRK has used to generate money. These include drugs trafficking, black market smuggling and the illegal wildlife trade.

The DPRK’s production of fake bills is certainly impressive in its size. PP is aware of $45 million worth of counterfeit currency that was seized between 1989 and 2005, running at an average seizure of $2.7 million each year before 2005 when a staggering $11 million was seized. Considerably more currency is likely to have remained in the open market and have never been detected.

North Korea obviously found its sale of counterfeit dollars to be a profitable venture because in late 2009 they also began to produce counterfeit
€200 bills. These were sold at a value of $75 per note and were introduced into Eastern Europe.

North Korean supernotes are usually sold and distributed overseas by hand-picked DPRK diplomatic officials selected by the Kim regime for their expertise in smuggling techniques, and travel across the world to identify likely buyers. These dealers have no issues trying to sell to criminal and terrorist organizations. In the 1990’s PP has found from quite clear evidence that fake bills were distributed via terrorist networks including the IRA, Hezbollah and the Japanese Red Army – as well as organized crime syndicates in Asia (see article here).

In their dealings in Africa the North Koreans also crossed ethical boundaries. They regularly defrauded developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with huge volumes of fake US Dollars. In 2009 officers of the KWP External Liaison Department (ELD) traveled to Nigeria for six months to arrange the sale of supernotes – for 30 percent of their face value. PP has found out from our research that the KWP Operations Department, via the “Korea Stamp Company”, then managed production and delivery of these bills. However many were subsequently seized.

North Korea’s ‘supernote’ program has funded terrorist organizations and powerful organized crime groups across the world. It is one more activity that shows the disregard that North Korea’s leaders hold for international law in pursuit of power.

PP has learned from a South African researcher that North Korean diplomats have reduced their buying and selling of ivory and rhino horns over the last year.

For a regime that has been involved in the slaughter and sale of African wildlife for over 30 years, this sudden change in behaviour appears strange. Kim Jong Un is happy to conduct poisonous nuclear tests, so its hard for PP to imagine that he’s suddenly developed an environmental conscience.

So what could be driving his change of mind?

It looks like a final effort to save the reputation of North Korea’s embassies overseas after its diplomats were caught in a series of embarrassing acts.

In September and October 2016 two North Korean diplomats were separately detained in Addis Ababa for smuggling ivory. In March 2016 a North Korean diplomat in Tanzania was kicked out for ivory and drug trafficking in Zambia and South Africa using a forged passport. Embarrasingly – and widely reported in the global media, in May 2015, Pak Chol-Jun and Kim Jong-Su, both North Korean diplomats based in Pretoria, were arrested with 4.5 kilograms of rhino horns in Maputo. (See article here.)

These are not isolated cases. For decades, the criminal trade in African wildlife has been a valuable source of income for the regime in Pyongyang. The Global Initiative Against Transactional Organised Crime reported in 2016 that North Korean diplomats have been caught smuggling horn and ivory at least 18 times since 1986. (See article here.) The extensive trade also ties in to the wider political destabilisation. For example, in 2009 North Korea provided arms and training to military groups in the DRC and Ethiopia in exchange for diamonds and ivory. These goods were smuggled out for resale to organised crime groups in Thailand.

With this long and negative history in Africa, is the DPRK going to stop its involvement in wildlife crime? It doesn’t seem likely to PP.

Indeed, the regime already appears to have lost control of the issue. PP has learned that in the last few months, middlemen in West Africa claimed that DPRK labourers in Africa were continuing to smuggle ivory for their own personal profit. North Korean workers are a source of cheap labour in poorly managed mining projects in the forests of West and Central Africa. Forced to hand over all of their wages to Kim Jong Un’s nuclear pet project, PP doesn’t think that they will stop exploiting Africa’s wildlife to make some money on the side.

North Korean involvement in wildlife crime looks likely to continue. African governments must unite to stop these criminal acts. Pyongyang’s diplomats overseas must not be allowed to continue destroying Africa’s natural wealth for their own benefit.

North Korea continues to pressure its overseas workers to produce revenue with little regard for their wellbeing – slavery?

PP found reports that according to a Mauritius investigative journalist, a North Korean fishing crew based in the country was refused the permission to access medical treatment by the DPRK regime – in spite of severe illness that left the members of the crew unable to work. The North Korea government refused permission for the sick workers to even leave Mauritius despite warnings about a severe threat to life and wellbeing.

The problems of North Korean fishing crews has made headlines before, as the isolated country’s desperate economic situation forces them into waters further and further from the North Korean coast. In January this year, three members of a twelve-man crew were found dead after their boat capsized in the Sea of Japan. Four more bodies were found in a separate boat nearby. (See article here.)

Fishing is not the only dangerous industry that DPRK laborers are forced into by the regime. North Korean workers have been killed in industrial accidents all around the world, including three miners that burned to death in an explosion at a coal mine in Malaysia in November 2014. (See article here.) Construction workers building the World Cup stadium in Qatar were taking home approximately 10% of the salary they were supposed to earn, with the rest being sent straight to the regime. The amounted to approximately $100/month in pay left over for the workers to live on – less than $3.50 per day.

It is clear to PP that higher pressure on fisherman shows that ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions are having a major impact on North Korea’s economy. Since the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2371 in September last year, pressure has really increased against the state and its overseas business ventures. 2371, which bans the member states from accepting additional workers from North Korea, has been strongly implemented by some of DPRK’s previous international allies.

For example, Angola, traditionally a North Korean ally, expelled 154 North Korean construction workers in November 2017; Sudan announced the stop of all their trade and military and the U.A.E. agreed to suspend any new visas from October 2017. The pressure is only increasing!

This should all be good news for North Korea’s overseas workforce, which has long labored under a form of slavery in support of the repressive government. However, reports from human rights activists suggests to PP that North Korea continues to send workers overseas in contravention of UN sanctions and the dangerous working conditions they are facing. The numbers are unclear but between 50,000 and 80,000 North Koreans are believed to be laboring overseas, with most of them based in Russia and China. (see article here.) There are still reports of construction workers earning less than $2 an hour, a figure which looks even more worrying if the workers only actually receive 10% of their earnings.

North Korea continues to make the case for more work permits for laborers based in Russia, as well as seeking to send more workers to other countries including Uganda , Belarus and Nigeria. Former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s call for African nations to end economic ties with North Korea suggests to PP that this activity remains a concern, in spite of the extensive sanctions in place. North Korea’s continued human rights abuses against its own citizens, at home and abroad, must stimulate other countries to stick firmly to UN resolutions.

The outlook for North Korean workers overseas remains difficult. Showing just how close to slavery this employment is, PP hears reports that workers have had their mobile phones confiscated to limit their access to information and to prevent defections. To get around this, the regime chooses workers who have wives and children in the DPRK so they are less likely to defect.

Without more international pressure to stop this form of modern day slavery, North Korean citizens will continue to die in unsafe mines, fishing vessels and construction sites around the world.