Exploiting their official role in order to earn in foreign currency as labor suppliers, North Korean consulates to China have introduced North
Korean laborers to Chinese businesses in the textiles and seafood industries
for 200 Yuan a head per month, Daily NK has learned.
“Starting from about a few years ago, officials in the North
Korean consulates in China started to provide young female workers to ethnic
Korean owned toll processing businesses for a fee. Recently, one such consulate has
been receiving a 200-Yuan per month fee in similar transactions with a wig-making
factory. The fee in this case is transferred from the worker’s account in
accordance with the contract,” a North Korean source currently residing in
China reported to Daily NK on March 18.
This development was corroborated by an additional source close to the issue in China.
The brokering of these deals originated in Shenyang, where ethnic Korean
managers of seafood processing and packaging, textiles manufacturing, and wig
and artificial eyebrow making factories started hiring young, cheap female
workers from Pyongyang. The number of Chinese businesses looking to hire young,
pretty, 20-something natives of Pyongyang is so large that the consulates have
stepped in to facilitate.
Demand from Chinese businesses in the Northeast cities of
Jilin, Heilongjiang, and Liaoning quickly built on the momentum, meeting supply from North
Korean authorities looking to export labor for a profit. There is a heavy
emphasis on beautiful young girls from big cities like the capital. Even now,
in the face of strict primary and secondary sanctions targeting the North
Korean regime, the demand for young North Korean female workers has not abated.
This is unlikely to change, according to the source, who suggested that the power of consulates to manage
these operations should not be dismissed. “North Korean consulates
operate as part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Their function is partly to
read the current domestic and international situation as it relates to trade.
They therefore have a monopoly over such information that they can make good
use of. North Korea-China merchants and managers of joint ventures active in
border cities such as Dandong, Beijing, and Shenyang cannot afford to ignore
the power of the consulates,” she said.
“The consulates use their privileged access to
information about overseas market trends to engage in illegal foreign-currency
earning schemes. The consulate has been known to assist managers of North
Korean trading companies by helping them secure favorable contracts with
Chinese companies on the rise in exchange for bribes that can be worth tens of
thousands of dollars.”
By the source’s estimates, there are approximately 100
companies in Dandong and Shenyang that are employing young North Korean females.
Of these companies, the vast majority paid a fee to the consulate in exchange
for the workers. “But since this intermediation has been done and paid for in
secret, it is difficult to know just how long it has been going on for,” she noted.
“The consulates have used their authority in order to expand
their secret foreign-currency earning operations. The Consul General is closing
his eyes and putting out his hand, allowing this to happen for a bribe. There
have been plenty of cases of cadres at consulates who were unable to get
the hang of this secret business scheme. The ones who aren’t able to earn money
and then hand over loyalty funds to superiors are given the axe in due course
and sent back home.”
