UN: New Report Reveals ‘Shocking’ Forced Labour in N Korea

The UN has warned of a deeply institutionalised system of forced labour in North Korea, which in some cases could amount to the crime against humanity of enslavement.

In a damning report on Tuesday, the United Nations rights office detailed how people in the reclusive and authoritarian country were “controlled and exploited through an extensive and multi-layered system of forced labour”.
“The testimonies in this report give a shocking and distressing insight into the suffering inflicted through forced labour upon people,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
Many faced regular beatings and women were “exposed to continuing risks of sexual violence”, he added.
The rights office relied on a range of sources for the report, including 183 interviews conducted between 2015 and 2023 with victims and witnesses who escaped North Korea and were living abroad.
“If we didn’t meet the daily quota, we were beaten and our food was cut,” said one victim cited in the report.
The latest allegations follow a landmark report published by a UN team of investigators a decade ago which documented forced labour among other rampant rights abuses such as deliberate starvation, rape and torture in North Korea.
Tuesday’s report zeroed in on an institutionalised system, with six different types of forced labour, including during the country’s 10-year minimum military conscription.
Tuesday’s report stressed that those sent abroad lose up to 90 percent of their wages to the state, work under constant surveillance, and have their passports confiscated, with almost no time off.
The system “acts as a means for the state to control, monitor and indoctrinate the population”, the report said, adding that in some instances the level of control and exploitation “may reach the threshold of ‘ownership'”.