North Korea’s overseas labour programme is funding dictator Kim Jong Un’s “unlawful” nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programme, a multilateral monitoring group of developed countries said on Wednesday.
North Korea is engaging in “evasion of UN sanctions” through a global network of overseas labour, the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) revealed in a damning report.
The report pointed out that at least 17 countries continued to host an estimated 35,600 to 101,280 North Korean workers in total in violation of the United Nations Security Council resolution (UNSC) requiring the repatriation of North Korean workers to North Korea.
MSMT is a coalition of developed nations set up in 2024 to monitor North Korea’s scaled up efforts to evade sanctions from the UN.
North Korea’s overseas labourers allegedly help the isolated nation raise funds for government priorities including licit and illicit imports as well as the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and ballistic missile programmes, the MSMT said.
“In 2025, North Korean overseas labourers unlawfully generated between $450m and $800m in total for the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) government. Estimates reflect a majority of these funds were earned by overseas North Korean IT workers,” according to the report shared with The Independent.
In 2017, the UN Security Council (UNSC) made it illegal for any UN member state to allow North Koreans to earn income within their jurisdictions. All countries were required to repatriate any North Koreans earning income within their jurisdictions back to the DPRK by 2019.
Around 38 countries across the world have North Korea’s labourers since the 2019 deadline to repatriate all North Koreans.
Under the state-sponsored programme, North Korea’s labourers abroad have to send their remittances back home.
An overwhelming majority of North Korean labourers are in China, estimated to be anywhere between 20,000 to 70,000, while Russia is the second largest employer with around 15,000 to 30,000 labourers working in the country waging a war on Ukraine.
China has denied the charges of hosting illegal workers from North Korea but human rights groups and investigations have revealed thousands are still part of the labour workforce in Chinese factories, plants and fishing fleets.
“Labourers in Asia largely focus on IT, manufacturing, and construction, while labourers in Africa work mostly in the medical and construction fields,” the report said.
North Korea then allegedly confiscates around 80 to 90 per cent of the wages earned by its labourers in faraway lands, enduring long work hours, exploitative conditions, and negligible medical support.
“In some cases, the confiscated amount exceeds their actual earnings, leaving North Korean overseas labourers indebted to the DPRK government,” the report added.
On the other hand, Russia has created a student visa scheme to “camouflage” North Korean labourers as Pyongyang sends more and more of its country’s nationals to work in Russian cities, according to reports.
Russia and North Korea have increased their bilateral relationships with military and defence agreements but many of the North Koreans are also working on construction sites in the country.
The Independent reported earlier this year North Korean workers sent to Russia for state-sponsored forced labour programmes were allowed only one shower a year and were treated worse than cattle, drawing on testimonies from the workers in an investigation by the Hague-based international law foundation Global Rights Compliance revealed.
The first-hand testimonies showed these workers were subject to an oppressive pattern of control, abuse and coercion.
“MSMT's alarming report confirms what GRC’s investigations have exposed – North Korean workers are being channelled through Russian labour brokers into a system built on debt bondage, confiscated documents and constant surveillance, generating hard currency for Pyongyang,” said Lara Strangways, head of business and human rights at international human rights foundation at the GRC.
She added: “This is a problem which must be urgently confronted as the scale and breadth of state-sponsored forced labour expands due to the DPRK's intensifying need for foreign currency.”
Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, United Kingdom, and the United States are among the MSMT member nations.
