North Korea’s “laboring class” has turned out to be Kim Jong Il regime’s main source of foreign currency.
According to Korea Institute for International Economic Policy, North Korea exports labor forces to earn 40-60 million dollars annually.
North Korea’s labor force export has grown significantly since the fall of Eastern European communist regimes in the 90s; In Russia and the Middle East, construction workers, in China and Southeast Asia, clothing factory laborers. There are even farmers and fishers exported by North Korea. In numeric terms, there are about five thousands in Russian Far East, 3,500 in Kuwait, 2,000 in Qatar, 1,500 in UAE, around a thousand in China and 2-300 in Czech Republic estimated, totaling twenty to thirty thousands North Korean labor forces working around the world.
In a recent article in a South Korean newspaper, North Korean defectors from a Russian construction site testified their stories. The exploited laborers worked hours ranging from 12 to 17 every day. They dwelled at a designated place near the construction site and suffered by sever labor. Based on their testimony, it is assumed that at least two thousand “exported laborers” have defected the work site and are meandering in Russia.
Unbearable labor environment is not the only reason for the North Korean workers to decide to flee from their job in foreign soil. Most of the defectors would have remained only if the North Korean authorities keep fair amount of their wages. The so-called exported workers are deprived of most of their earnings by the North Korean government, in a complicated way.
Exported workers had to pay 100 US dollars to their local party officials in North Korea, as a commission, if got a chance to work abroad. In Russia, North Korean workers are paid 200 to 300 US dollars every month, and as much as 250 dollars are spent as bribery for party officials and “tax” for the authorities. And they squeezed out again when they come back to North Korea, because of ridiculously low exchange rate.
Kim Jong Il regime has boasted building a heaven of workers and farmers. In reality, however, the regime exploits workers far harsher than capitalists or landowners did during the Industrial Revolution or the Japanese Colonization period. Kim Jong Il indeed maintains his brutal dictatorship by abusing the laborers.
“North Korea is a society in which workers are masters of their own” is a sheer lie made by Kim Jong Il. North Korea should transform to the place where working people are their own masters. And the only way that Kim Jong Il performs serious and real political/economic reform.
