North Korea is mobilizing vast numbers of military construction workers, work brigades, and factory laborers for a nationwide building program aimed at constructing regional industrial facilities purportedly to improve living standards. These workers face grueling conditions with no set schedule, forced to endure extreme hours of hard labor.
A Daily NK source in North Pyongan province said recently that workers at large-scale greenhouse farms in Sinuiju and Uiju county routinely work 10-14 hour days, with schedules changing at managers’ whim but averaging about 12 hours daily.
While North Korean propaganda boasts of having established an eight-hour workday before South Korea, calling itself a “workers’ paradise,” the reality is starkly different. Most citizens aren’t even aware that labor laws stipulating eight-hour workdays exist, leaving them with no understanding of their legal rights or protections.
“People typically start at 8 a.m. and don’t return home before 8 p.m. Factory workers and those at external sites frequently work around the clock under what managers call ‘mobilizations’ and ‘struggles,'” the source explained.
At the Sinuiju and Uiju construction sites, supervisors push laborers through exhausting hours in competitive “construction races” designed to demonstrate results and prove loyalty to the regime. “Workers must meet their managers’ demands without complaint to achieve party goals,” the source said. “They have only obligations, not rights.”
Military personnel and work brigades face even harsher conditions. “Soldiers and work brigades must follow an absurd mandate—to leap into deep water or fire without hesitation when ordered by the party,” the source revealed. “They endure far worse physical hardship than ordinary construction workers.”
“Soldiers and work brigades have absolutely no rights, only duties,” the source concluded. “In truth, North Koreans don’t live in a ‘workers’ paradise’ but in a ‘hell’ where they’re stripped of all rights.”
The same punishing regimen applies to those building 10,000 homes in Pyongyang and developing modern regional factories under the party’s “20 x 10 regional development policy.”
