Author Archives for Grant Montgomery

North Korean slave laborers in the heart of the European Union

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North Korean forced laborers, in the heart of the European Union? It sounds impossible to believe.

But a VICE investigation has found extensive evidence of North Koreans working in conditions of forced labor in Poland, with their wages funding the DPRK regime. VICE gained access to confidential documents such as service contracts, payment records, registers of persons, passport copies, and excerpts from a population register smuggled out of North Korea, the latter indicating a Polish company may be being run by a high-ranking member of the North Korean military.

The investigation was sparked by the death of a North Korean working as a welder at a major shipyard in the Gdansk region. He suffered 95 percent burns in an accident that was only possible because of inadequate working equipment and unsafe practices, the yard’s responsible work inspector Tomasz Rutkowski told us.

A document seen by VICE revealed that Polish National Labor Inspectorate (PIP) found 14 different Polish companies using North Korean workers between 2010 and 2016. The investigation focused on Rungrado and three Polish companies, two of which we discovered supply North Korean workers to two major shipyards which build and repair ships for clients across the European Union (EU).

PIP’s documents show that North Koreans were also found working in industries such as surface construction, furniture production, agriculture, metalworking, medicine, and finance.

A company known as the Korea Rungrado General Trading Corporation, which is directly owned by Kim’s Workers’ Party and has been implicated in the illicit shipment of Scud missile parts to Egypt, was also named in the document.

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Firsthand account of working conditions of North Koreans in Poland

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Conversations [that VICE investigators] managed to have with North Korean shipyard workers in Poland revealed they frequently work 11 to 12 hours a day, five days a week, with shorter seven hour shifts on Saturdays. [They] also observed workers being brought to a construction site in Warsaw on a bus at 5.52am and picked up after 7pm, then taken to living quarters inside a heavily guarded compound in an isolated rural area.

“We don’t receive the money personally in our hands,” said one. He was unable to tell us how much he earned per hour or per month. “We let the company look after it. When I return to [North] Korea I’ll get the money. If we carried cash, there’s a chance that we could lose it. Anyway we don’t need any money on the way to and from work. We leave it to the company, that’s safest.”

At their living quarters, four to five workers share a room with one bed each, another North Korean told us. As they are also required to work night shifts, there are usually two to three persons sleeping in the room at any time, he said.

We asked another if he was able to talk to Polish co-workers. “We simply don’t have time. We go to work and then we go back home. That’s all we do,” he said.

When asked if it was true that workers were not allowed to keep wages, and their employer kept a large proportion, he said: “Unfortunately I cannot answer that question.”

According to the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea, workers abroad are deprived of the majority of their wages, which are paid in foreign currency direct to the DPRK, serving as a method of bypassing UN sanctions. “Laborers are rarely allowed to leave work sites or to come into contact with locals throughout their periods of forced labor.

Access to media is denied, communication with family members in North Korea is limited, and ideological indoctrination lessons are more pervasive than those conducted in the DPRK,” it said in a report published last September which was based on interviews with defectors.              Read more

50 thousand North Koreans work abroad earning foreign currency for Kim regime

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The UN estimated in a report last year there are about 50,000 North Koreans abroad, earning the Kim regime $1.2billion to $2.3bn per year. The workers are paid very little, with their employers paying “significantly higher amounts” directly to the North Korean government, said special UN rapporteur Marzuki Darusman.

Remco Breuker, a professor of Korean Studies at Holland’s Leiden University who chairs a working group of experts to research North Korean forced laborers in the EU, puts the situation bluntly: “In my view, North Korea is the world’s largest illegal job agency. They send people where they’re needed to whoever wants to pay.”

Breuker is clear the North Koreans are working under duress. “It’s definitely forced labor as far as I can tell. Whether these people can be considered slaves, that’s a difficult question to answer — I would probably say they come very close to being slaves,” he said. “You can’t really speak of voluntary labor.”

Research indicates workers are mostly from Pyongyang, and must be loyal to the regime, and married — allowing the threat of consequences for family members to act as leverage to ensure good behavior. They are allowed a 40-day vacation back home after two years work, after which they work abroad for another three years. One worker VICE spoke to said he had been in Poland for five years.

A spokesperson from Poland’s immigration authority told VICE that asylum was granted to a North Korean who fled while working in Poland in 2015, but provided no further details.

Kim Seung-cheol escaped during a work assignment in Russia in 1999, though sources who spoke to VICE upon condition of anonymity claimed no more than 50 out of every 50,000 North Koreans who work abroad successfully flee. According to Kim, the secret police visit the families of disobedient workers and he told VICE that his son and mother were deported and then died shortly after he fled his employment. “My whole family was destroyed,” he said.

[Read full VICE News article] 

Young North Korean Defector remembers chasing after flyer balloons

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Kim Kyoung-ok still remembers chasing after the flyer balloons, alien care packages raining from the sky, filled with Korean noodles and letters from children like her. She did not know yet that there could be a better life than the one she was born to in North Korea.

But as the years passed, her mother, Kim Tae-hee, had experienced a comparatively better quality of life in China where she was one of the approximately 50,000-60,000 North Koreans permitted to work abroad—an opportunity granted to citizens considered loyal to the regime.

Kyoung-ok was only 12 when her mother decided to make a dream of a better life a reality, fleeing with her youngest daughter to China. Now 21, Kyoung-ok detailed the treacherous journey of defecting from North Korea.

It was 2007 and Beijing was preparing for the 2008 Olympic Games. Kyoung-ok explained that the crackdown on North Korean defectors had intensified ahead of the games, with China repatriating those suspected of attempting an escape to South Korea. She and her mother were forced into hiding, living in Chinese caves before traveling through Vietnam and Cambodia with the assistance of a paid broker. The pair sought asylum at a Cambodian Christian church before arriving in South Korea in 2008.

Kyoung-ok has adjusted well to her life in the South, and has developed a close friendship with a fellow refugee she met at resettlement camp and who asked not to share her last name. The relationships built in her new home have proven vital to Kyoung-ok, who has lived on her own in Seoul to attend school since age 13, while her mother, a music teacher, worked in the southern part of the country.

[Excerpted from TIME]

Second group of North Korean defectors expected in Seoul shortly

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A second group, as yet an unspecified number, of North Koreans working at a restaurant outside North Korea have escaped their workplace and will come to South Korea, South Korean officials said Tuesday.

The announcement follows earlier South Korean media reports that two or three female employees at a North Korean-run restaurant in China fled and went to an unidentified Southeast Asian country.

It’s the second known group escape by North Korean restaurant workers dispatched abroad in recent weeks. In April, a group of 13 North Koreans who had worked at a North Korean-run restaurant in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo defected to South Korea. After the 13 workers – a male manager and 12 waitresses – arrived in Seoul in April, Pyongyang claimed they were kidnapped by South Korean spies and repeatedly demanded their return. South Korea said the workers chose to resettle in the South on their own.

New Focus, a Seoul-based online news outlet run by a North Korean defector, was among the first to break the news Monday. It said the group comprised three women in their 20s who had worked at a North Korean-run restaurant near Shanghai.

[Associated Press]

In seeking to understand the North Koreans

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The Koreans are fiercely independent folk, ethnocentric to the extreme, nationalists for whom Korea is above all and the Koreans are a race apart.

Actually, in this (and many other) aspect they are quite similar to the Japanese, their neighbors and former colonial masters for some forty years. But the Japanese went through seventy years of Americanization, westernization, liberalization and demilitarization after their defeat in 1945. The unreconstructed Koreans retained their national pride, so they are more similar to the Japanese of 1930s.

We must keep in mind the most cruel Korean War of the cruel Twentieth Century, for otherwise we can’t understand the Korean character. During the Korean War, the American command “turned its fury on all standing structures … cities and towns all over North Korea went up in flames [until] Pyongyang resembled Hiroshima”, says Encyclopedia Britannica. The US dropped more ordnance on defenseless Korea than it did on Germany or Japan.

Kim I (Kim Il Sung) began pursuit of nuclear weapons. I’ve been told that he decided it had to be done after the Cuban missile crisis. … And I’ve been told by many Koreans that since the Korean War, North Koreans have lived in constant fear they will be nuked by the US. For them, an H-bomb is the only guarantee against a possible US attack.

Just a few months ago the US and their South Korean allies, some four hundred thousand troops altogether, practiced the conquest of Pyongyang and elimination of the North Korean government. Imagine if Russia were to land nearly half a million soldiers in Cuba and begin to practice how to sack Washington and destroy the White House! The US fleet would come all over Cuba in a jiffy. So one can definitely understand why the North Korean leadership is worried.

The North Koreans aren’t brainwashed zombies, but perfectly human, though they belong to a very distinct and different culture. Whenever I had an occasion, I had a couple of beers with locals in a local pub, where all tried to offer me another mug of their perfect natural brew. Again, the Koreans are cautious but not paranoid in their contacts with foreigners. … And they are fond of beer.

[The Unz Review]

Political correctness North Korean style – Part 1

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For foreigners who visit North Korea, minders are a constant presence. Besides translating, they tell journalists and tourists where they can and can’t go, and impart the official line on everything from relations with the U.S. to the proper way to refer to the regime’s leaders. And they have a few pet peeves:

What to Call the Country. North Korea is not North Korea. Rather, it is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, DPR Korea or DPRK. Completely out of bounds is “the hermit kingdom”; minders say the term is deeply insulting to them. South Korea, with whom a war in the 1950s culminated in an uneasy truce, is known in print as “south Korea,” with the south in lower case.

How to Address Leaders. North Korea has a government, but there are only three people who really matter–and two of them are dead. Kim Il Sung, who founded the country and died in 1994, is often “eternal president,” or “great general.” His son Kim Jong Il is “chairman” or “dear leader.” Kim Jong Un, who took power after his father passed away in late 2011, may be called “supreme leader” or “dear respected”.

Those Kim Pins. All North Koreans wear a pin over their left breast featuring the face of Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il–or both. The most common one is a shining red flag with the two men’s portraits. But don’t call them pins. That word undermines their significance. As one minder said after consulting translation software on his phone, they are “badges.”   continued

Political correctness North Korean style – Part 2

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The United States. Mentioning the U.S. can result in a long lecture. There is no such thing as U.S. relations, only “hostile U.S. policy.” Any hardship faced by North Korea is the fault of the U.S. and its “puppet” South Korea.

North Korea’s Nukes. Asked his thoughts on ties, Om Myong Chin, a 57-year-old who works at a battery factory, said: “If the U.S. government stops its hostile policy against our country, with time relations might improve.” The minders were quick to agree.

Difficult Questions. A minder’s frequent answer to a question is: “That is a difficult question.” Difficult questions include: “Why am I not allowed to go out of the hotel by myself?” Answer: “People’s bad emotions about the U.S. are running high and I might not be able to protect you.” Questions that might suggest criticism of the leaders are often not translated or acknowledged.

When a Minder is Not a Minder. “The minder’s job is to hide the embarrassing inner side of North Korean society from the eyes of outsiders,” said Ahn Chan Il, a North Korean defector.  Minders don’t want to be called minders. “I am not minding you,” said one. “We are guiding you. Please call me your guide.”

[Bloomberg]

Activist says ordinary North Koreans have little respect for Kim Jong Un

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Kim Jong Un has yet to earn the grudging respect of ordinary North Koreans, according to North Korean defector and activist Jeong Kwang-il. Jeong says most North Koreans who do not curry favor with the regime do not refer to him as the “General” or the “Supreme Leader.”

In the past, North Korean leaders were addressed with honorifics, Jeong said. “But nowadays when I speak to North Koreans on the phone, they just call him ‘Jong Un,’ the way one would refer to a friend,” Jeong said.

That trend could be frustrating to the young Kim, who recently was declared “Chairman” during North Korea’s Seventh Party Congress. But the lack of reforms and improvement to people’s lives could be having a greater effect on perceptions of Kim in the country.

Jeong also said that defector activism, including the delivery of South Korean videos such as films of resettled defectors in the South, flash drives of western movies and memory cards for mobile phones, are making an impact on North Korean understanding of the outside world.

Disillusioned with the regime after viewing the media, some North Koreans have started to call the leader “that guy Jong Un” or sometimes “that kid,” according to Jeong.

There’s evidence North Koreans are no longer afraid to breach rules of conduct, the activist said.

[UPI]

Kim Jong-Un successfully manages the generation change

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With his consolidation of power completed at the recent Party Congress, Kim Jong-Un seems to have successfully managed the generation change in North Korea, a tricky affair anywhere.

Foreign bystanders reported that the people were visibly excited to see the young Kim, and even passing by the tribunes they tried to linger and wave flowers and banners in his direction.

Kim Jong-Un appeared in a dark double-breasted jacket and an elegant light tie instead of Mao-style military wear usual for Korean officials. The jacket was to remind the North Korean people of Kim Il Sung, his venerated grandfather, who first appeared in a very similar wear in liberated Pyongyang.