Tag: forced labor
Young North Koreans turn to flexible 8·3 labor as state wages...
Young workers in North Korea are increasingly using a practice known as "8·3 labor" — paying a fee to their state-assigned workplace in exchange...
North Korea soldiers forced into soybean farming say officers take the...
North Korean soldiers stationed in Hamhung, the capital of South Hamgyong province, have been mobilized en masse for soybean planting on military-run auxiliary farms,...
North Korea’s rice planting mobilization drives an unexpected taxi boom
North Korea's annual rice planting mobilization campaign has produced an unexpected side effect: a spike in taxi demand, as people across South Pyongan province...
Chongjin households work through the night on wigs and eyelashes to...
Wig and eyelash assembly work has taken off as a cottage industry in Chongjin, North Korea's third-largest city, as intensifying market controls and rising...
North Korea threatens to send failing students to coal mines after...
North Korea's ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) launched a sweeping inspection of senior middle schools in 2026 after a new elective subject system...
Political bloodlines drive North Korea’s Social Safety Forces recruitment
North Korea's annual military conscription season is now underway, and the Social Safety Forces — the country's internal security force, roughly equivalent to South...
North Korean students mobilized to farm school land as rations dry...
North Korean students have barely settled into the new school year before being pulled out of class to expand school farmland plots, with parents...
North Korea rejects 90% of local party documents in post-congress crackdown
North Korea has launched an unprecedented inspection campaign targeting party documents submitted by local Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) organizations following the Ninth Party...
As overseas deployment fears grow, North Korean parents dread conscription season
A large share of this year's senior high school graduates in North Korea have been classified as conscription candidates this spring, sources say, deepening...
Sinuiju residents bear cost of North Korea’s spring beautification drive
Authorities in Sinuiju, North Pyongan province, are forcing people along thoroughfares and railways to fund and carry out a state beautification campaign at their...
