Tens of thousands of impoverished North Koreans have been sent abroad to work as “state-sponsored slaves” whose wages are confiscated and used to buy luxury goods for the regime, human rights activists have claimed.
The practice, used since the 1980s to help fill the hermit kingdom’s coffers, has reportedly accelerated under Kim Jong-un, who took power following the death of Kim Jong-il, his father, in 2011. Until 2012 there were thought to be up to 65,000 North Korean workers around the globe, often in terrible conditions. That number has since risen to around 100,000, activists told The New York Times.
Ahn Myeong-chul, the head of NK Watch, a Seoul-based rights group, told the newspaper Pyongyang was “exploiting their labour and salaries to fatten the private coffers of Kim Jong-un. We suspect that Kim is using some of the money to buy luxury goods for his elite followers and finance the recent building boom in Pyongyang that he has launched to show off his leadership.”
A year ago The Rubin Report already reported: