North Korean forced labour programme condemns workers to beatings, sexual abuse in Chinese seafood factories
A seafood trader who does business with the company estimated that it currently employs between 50 and 70 North Korean workers. Performers at the party wore North Korean colours, and the country’s flag billowed behind them. The US passed a law called the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act , which levies heavy fines on companies that import products tied to North Korean labour; the law established a “rebuttable presumption” that categorises work done by North Koreans as forced labour unless proven otherwise.
This year, I set out with a team of researchers to document the use of North Korean workers. We reviewed leaked government documents, promotional materials, satellite imagery, online forums and local news reports. We watched hundreds of cellphone videos published on Douyin, Bilibili and WeChat. In some, the presence of North Koreans was explicit. We shared others with experts to review them for North Korean accents, language use and other cultural markers.
The workers described being kept at the factories against their will, and being subjected to severe punishment if they tried to escape. In late 2023, an investigator from my team visited a Chinese plant called Donggang Xin Xin. He found hundreds of North Korean women working under a red banner that read, in Korean: “Let’s carry out the resolution of the 8th Congress of the Workers’ Party.” Soon after, he visited a nearby plant called Donggang Haimeng Foodstuff, and found a North Korean manager sitting at a wooden desk with two miniature flags, one Chinese and one North Korean.
Officials from Room 39 carefully select workers to send to China, screening applicants’ political loyalties to reduce the risk of defections. To qualify, a person must already have a job at a North Korean company and have a positive evaluation from a local Party official. “These checks start at the neighbourhood,” Breuker said.
Shifts run 14 to 16 hours. If workers try to escape, or complain to people outside the plants, their families at home can face reprisals from the government. One worker, who was at a seafood plant in the city of Dalian for several years, described how managers cursed and flicked cigarette butts at them. “I felt bad, and I wanted to fight them, but I had to endure,” she said. “That was when I was sad.