20,000 North Koreans ‘work in slavery’ abroad

The UN human rights investigator for North Korea said he would probe allegations of an estimated 20,000 North Koreans working in slave-like conditions abroad, mainly in China, Russia, and the Middle East.

Marzuki Darusman, UN special rapporteur on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, said some of the North Korean workers were reported to be in Qatar to help build facilities for the 2022 World Cup.

NK Watch put the number at more than 100,000 workers in 40 countries and said they earned €2.8bn annually in foreign currency for the Pyongyang government. The Seoul-based rights group urged an investigation into complicity by host countries.