A Chinese garment factory in Liaoning province attempted to bring roughly 100 North Korean female workers into China in January, but local authorities rejected the visa application, citing U.N. sanctions that prohibit North Korea from sending workers abroad, Daily NK has learned.
A source in China told Daily NK on Thursday that the factory had partnered with a North Korean trade company to arrange entry visas for the workers. The Chinese government refused to grant them.
Beijing has consistently declined to issue work visas to North Koreans under U.N. Security Council Resolution 2397, which explicitly prohibits Pyongyang from deploying workers overseas. To circumvent that restriction, North Korean workers have typically entered China on short-term visas, listed as exchange students or industrial trainees.
The garment factory and its North Korean partner expected to replicate an arrangement that had previously worked for groups of up to 30 workers, listing the North Koreans’ status as industrial trainees. This time, however, the Chinese government rejected the application. The decision led not only that factory but several others to abandon their plans to hire North Korean workers.
Chinese factories look elsewhere for labor
The broader labor pipeline has been tightening. Large numbers of North Korean workers already in China have been returning home, while the flow of new arrivals has slowed sharply, creating staffing problems for factories that had come to depend on them. Some have responded by relocating to southern China to find alternative sources of cheap labor.
North Korean workers have not been shut out entirely. Small groups can still enter China on short-term visas and are reportedly employed at fishery plants and garment factories in remote areas seldom visited by ordinary Chinese citizens. The arrangement appears designed to keep their presence from attracting wider attention.
Despite signs of warming ties between Pyongyang and Beijing, large-scale labor deployments appear unlikely to resume anytime soon. “This incident confirms once again that the Chinese government doesn’t admit North Koreans hoping to get jobs there,” the source said. “The factories that need large amounts of cheap labor have already moved elsewhere.”
Reporting from inside North Korea
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