A United Nations rights expert said on Wednesday that Pyongyang was increasingly sending its citizens to work overseas in slave-like conditions in order to earn hard currency.
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Darusman’s annual report is due to be debated by the UN General Assembly this week, and the Assembly is expected afterwards to once again adopt a resolution condemning Pyongyang’s rights record. And he asserted in that companies hiring North Korean workers “become complicit in an unacceptable system of forced labor”. The majority of the workers are in China and Russian Federation, mainly in the mining, textile and construction industries.
Workers, who are being sent to China and Russian Federation according to the global body’s report, are being underfed and are having to work 20-hour days in many cases.
Since August, the Red Cross has been making 10 to 13-minute-long video messages containing greetings from South Korean separated families, and expectations for reunions with their kin in the North and their personal stories.
A decline in an import of crops by the North from China was also cited as the cause for North Korea’s bigger food shortage, he said.
Darusman said it was apparent that Pyongyang imposes a “near-total denial of human rights”, on its citizens.
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The move may herald more visits to North Korea by South Korean civic and other non-government groups as Seoul is seeking to spur such civilian inter-Korean exchanges this year, a government official said. Pyongyang has tried to cultivate both over the years as rare allies.
