{"id":263395,"date":"2024-06-03T12:01:05","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T11:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=263395"},"modified":"2024-05-31T06:48:04","modified_gmt":"2024-05-31T05:48:04","slug":"north-korea-government-sponsored-labor-migration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/06\/north-korea-government-sponsored-labor-migration\/","title":{"rendered":"North Korea: Government-sponsored Labor Migration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Historically, migration has benefited the economies where it has happened, but it has also led to popular antagonism.\u00a0 The main arguement is usually about the numbers arriving and the nature of the immigrants\u00a0 – often displaying traits of racism and ethnic contempt.\u00a0 Today, many countries in Europe as well as the U.S.A. are trying to stem the tide of migrants and asylum seekers by putting up both physical and administrative controls.<\/p>\n

However, a reverse pattern has been outlined as the result of investigative reporting by Ian Urbina in his article “Invisible Workers: How North Korea operates a forced-labor program in China” in the U.S. journal The New Yorker of 4 March 2024.\u00a0 Urbina and his team of South Koreans, North Koreans in exile and a few Chinese interviewed North Koreans who had worked in China under North Korean government sponsored programs. The North Korean workers were usually accompanied by North Korean managers who oversaw their working conditions, received the income of the workers, and usually took their cut as well as sending funds to the North Korean\u00a0 government providing a vital source of foreign currency.\u00a0 The U.S. State Department estimates that there are a hundred thousand North Koreans working in China.<\/p>\n

North Korean government officials carefully select the workers who are sent to China, screening them for their political loyalties to deminish risks of defection.\u00a0 Workers usually sign two or three-year contracts.\u00a0 Many of the Korean workers are women who work in seafood-processing plants whose products are largely exported.\u00a0 Some 80 per cent of seafood consumed in the U.S.A. is imported, much from China.\u00a0 Many of the women interviewed described enduring sexual assault at the hands of their Korean managers or their Chinese supervisers.<\/p>\n

Working and living conditions are difficult. While many of the working conditions are in violation of International Labour Organization standards, there is little U.N. pressure for radical improvement.\u00a0 Change may come through growing unrest by Chinese workers.\u00a0 There have been an increasing number of protests and strikes by Chinese workers acting outside of any organized labor organization.\u00a0 This unrest merits close watching by those\u00a0 advocating reforms.\u00a0 We will have to see if Chinese “workers’ solidarity” includes foreign migrant workers.<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Ren\u00e9 Wadlow is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. He <\/em>is President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation and problem-solving in economic and social issues, and editor of <\/em>Transnational Perspectives.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Historically, migration has benefited the economies where it has happened, but it has also led to popular antagonism.\u00a0 The main argument is usually about the numbers arriving and the nature of the immigrants–often displaying traits of racism and ethnic contempt.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":244689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[2378,2325,883,2616,411],"class_list":["post-263395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-immigration","tag-migrant-workers","tag-migrants","tag-migration","tag-north-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263396,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263395\/revisions\/263396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}