Increasing Number of North Korean Workers Dispatched to Russia, Could Number as Many as 50,000 People

By Kazusa Yoda / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent

8:00 JST, March 30, 2026

SEOUL — Russia and North Korea are expanding their cooperation in the civilian sector in addition to their military collaborations in Russia’s prolonged aggression against Ukraine.

North Korea is dispatching workers to Russia, which has a shortage of workers as many of them have been sent to the battleground, and supporting Russia’s construction and manufacturing industries.

As a U.N. Security Council resolution obliges member states to repatriate North Korean workers to their home country, the two countries are taking advantage of the student visa as a loophole.

Accompanied by overseers

“They were working with great discipline,” said an executive of a Russian company, which sent North Korean workers to a construction site of a housing complex in southern Russia. A written proposal from a Russian broker, with whom the executive communicated via the messaging app Telegram, listed conditions, such as an order for workers that starts from at least 100 people and the company has no unpaid tax.

The monthly salary was supposed to start from 90,000 rubles, or about ¥180,000, but the company raised it by 50%. The proposal used such words as “students,” referring to workers, and “scholarship,” referring to salary. International students are allowed to take jobs in Russia. The proposal listed procedures until their dispatch with the pretext that students take part in practical training on production.

At the construction site that the executive took care of, laborers work 12 hours a day on a two-shift rotation, with one day off each week.

North Korean workers stay in temporary housing set up at the site, just like workers from Central Asia or elsewhere. They rarely went out. If they did, it was only on North Korean holidays. They wore a badge of the North Korean Workers’ Party and simply walked around the town.

People who appeared to be from a North Korean security organization were accompanying the workers like overseers. It was decided that their salary would not be handed to the worker. Rather, it would be transferred into a designated account. That was believed to be a measure to prevent them from escaping.

‘Contemporary version of slaves’

Unique Kim, a human rights analyst of the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, a private organization in South Korea, interviewed North Korean defectors about their dispatches. They reportedly said that people work 17 hours a day and some construction sites give no days off.

Ninety percent of their salary is reportedly seized by North Korean authorities under the pretext of “loyalty.” Kim said they are “the contemporary version of slaves.”

Kim said in a report released in September that North Korea acquires foreign currency worth up to $2 billion a year by dispatching workers overseas.

The report also pointed out that the money is used to promote North Korea’s nuclear and missile development programs.

In 2017, the U.N. Security Council prohibited member states from providing work authorization to North Korean nationals, in response to the country’s nuclear test and other issues. It also obliged member states to repatriate North Korean workers to their home country by the end of 2019.

“These ‘internships’ are effectively employment, and they violate the U.N. Security Council resolution regardless of the type of visa,” said Maiko Takeuchi, a former member of the U.N. Panel of Experts established pursuant to the resolution from 2016 to 2021.

The panel’s reports also pointed to the existence of North Korean workers overseas under the guise of student or tourist visas. However, the panel suspended its activities after Russia used its veto power. Takeuchi expressed concern, saying, “There possibly will be more violations of resolutions.”

50,000 workers in Russia?

According to Joung Eunlee, director of the Korea Institute for National Unification’s North Korean Research Division, the largest number of North Korean workers are dispatched to China, with an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 workers as of February 2024. Russia reportedly offers a higher salary than China does. In addition, there reportedly is a growing demand for female workers for military clothing factories and elsewhere in Russia.

The estimated number of North Korean workers sent to Russia was about 15,000 as of April last year. However, it is speculated that the number had increased to 50,000 by the end of last year.

The Russian firm’s executive who employed North Korean workers said he had been instructed by authorities to teach the Russian language to the workers. This indicates that Russia and North Korea may be training workers capable of communicating with each other with an eye on long-term cooperation between the two countries.