About 70 North Korean workers, most of them over the age of 60, have been sent to the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk in the Amur region.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source in Russia said Tuesday that people in Blagoveshchensk call the workers “old Korean people.”
The workers do interior work that requires skill rather than strength, such as plastering walls, laying tiles and wallpapering.
“These North Korean workers say they came to Russia on visas for agricultural workers, but in fact they appear to have come as foreign students or under some other status,” the source said.
When it became more difficult to issue work visas because of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2397, which prohibits North Korea from sending workers overseas, many North Korean workers began working in Russia on student visas and other temporary visas, the source said.
The source said some of the North Korean workers have been in Russia for five to 10 years. They appear to be workers who returned to North Korea in 2019 and re-entered Russia on student, cultural exchange or research visas.
“Due to sanctions requiring the repatriation of all North Korean workers abroad by December 2019, workers in Russia returned home, but managers in the Russian construction sector say North Korea later sent them back to Russia after they obtained student visas for them to get around the sanctions,” the source said.
The North Korean workers in Blagoveshchensk, who have been in Russia for five to 10 years, fall into this category, the source said.
The North Korean workers toil from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., but receive only 10,000 to 12,000 rubles ($110-130) a month.
“Each worker was originally allotted a salary of 150,000 rubles a month, but the North Korean company that manages them takes much of that as living expenses and state quotas,” the source said. “So they survive on about 10,000 to 12,000 rubles.”
Since North Korean workers cannot spend rubles in North Korea, they hoard the money they receive and try to exchange it for dollars before returning home. However, because the exchange rate is much higher than it was before COVID-19, it is much more difficult for them to take home large amounts of money.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the exchange rate was 60 rubles to the dollar, but now it is around 90 rubles to the dollar.
“Several workers are thinking of defecting because they could end up penniless after many years of working abroad,” the source said.
Daily NK works with a network of sources in North Korea, China, and elsewhere. For security reasons, their identities remain anonymous.
Please send any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.
