China enables North Korean forced labor, which in turn fuels Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine.
By Benedict Rogers in The Diplomat
Multiple geopolitical crises, from Iran to Ukraine, prove one truth: that dictators often stick together. China and Russia have been aiding Iran, with satellite intelligence, while Beijing has been described as the “decisive enabler” of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, and North Korea has been supplying Moscow’s army with troops.
What has been little understood until now, however, is that both China and Russia are directly facilitating North Korea’s crimes against humanity through what a new report calls “a state-directed system of forced labor deployment.”
The new report, published by the Seoul-based Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR), was launched in Brussels and London last month. Titled “Financing Oppression and Weapons Program: Russia-North Korea Joint Venture Through Military and Security Forces,” the report’s investigation reveals that North Korea is trafficking soldiers – disguised as students – to Russia as forced labor. These North Koreans are not only fighting in Putin’s war in Ukraine but also working on construction projects – benefiting Putin’s regime, and financing Kim Jong Un’s.
The report summed up this atrocity: “North Korean workers dispatched to Russia are exploited as instruments for generating foreign currency to sustain weapons production and regime survival. They are subjected to state trafficking and forced labor.”
The practice long predates the Ukraine war. In 2017, the New York Times reported on slavery involving forced North Korean laborers in the home improvement and forestry industry in Russia.
The NKHR’s new report followed a previous report published in November 2024, titled “Made In China: How Global Supply Chain Fuels Slavery in North Korea’s Prison Camps.” That 2024 report detailed crimes against humanity in North Korea’s prisons, which are part of China’s supply chains – and thereby the world’s. In other words, products labeled “Made in China” may very well have been made in North Korean prison camps.
Many of the victims are women. As the Made In China report stated: “Prisoners endure severe violence, including sexual assaults, forced nudity, rapes, forced abortions, beatings, and extrajudicial killings. Many are compelled to work up to 20 hours a day to meet export quotas for goods sent to China.”
For many years, forced labor in China’s supply chains has been widely reported. Whether it is Uyghur slave labor of the kind reported six years ago, with Uyghurs loaded onto trains and moved around China, or forced labor documented by the United Nations this year, or prison labor reported by former foreign prisoners such as Peter Humphrey, forced labor in China’s supply chains is well-established.
But now it is clear that China is not only using its own prison population for slave labor. As the “Made In China” report put it, “Chinese authorities have also been well aware of Chinese companies outsourcing to North Korea in violation of international sanctions, and exporting raw materials for production of wigs, fake eyelashes, rattan bags, or textiles.”
These two reports lift the veil on the cruel nexus between Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang – a nexus that entails human trafficking, forced labor, rape, sexual violence, and torture. The three regimes are facilitating each others’ mass atrocities.
And the victims come from other countries as well. A new report by Fortify Rights and Truth Hounds exposed the trafficking of men from South Asia – particularly Bangladesh, but also other countries in the region – to fuel Putin’s war in Ukraine. “I Was Tricked Into War: The Risk of Human Trafficking and Coerced Recruitment of Bangladeshi Men into Russia’s War in Ukraine” is a vital report that should be read in capitals across Asia, Europe, and the world. And human trafficking with the end goal of fueling Russia’s war effort is found not only in South Asia, but also in other parts of the world, particularly in Africa and Central Asia.
Last month I had the privilege of speaking alongside NKHR’s courageous advocate and a co-author of the first two reports mentioned, Joanna Hosaniak. We spoke together in the British Parliament, alongside two great British human rights champions, Lord Alton of Liverpool and Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP.
In my remarks in support of Hosaniak’s vital reports, I said that having played a part in the campaign for the establishment of a U.N. Commission of Inquiry on North Korea more than a decade ago, and as an advocate for justice and accountability for atrocity crimes in China, Myanmar, and Russia, I support NKHR’s recommendation that the international community should “effectively update the milestone U.N. Commission of Inquiry’s 2014 report” on North Korea with “an intersectional approach” that “connects the state’s mass atrocities to its illicit economic activities and the military and security organs that both operate the abusive system and sustain profits.”
In other words, “the same organs pose threats to international security through their involvement in the expansion of the weapons program” by North Korea.
Human rights and security, ultimately, are almost always intertwined. When dictatorships or authoritarian regimes unleash a reign of terror against their own people and against other countries, it is accompanied by a lack of respect for basic freedoms, human rights, and human dignity for everyone, everywhere.
The sale of slave labor from North Korea to China, Russia, and then to the world; the trafficking of gun fodder from South Asia to Putin’s army and onto the frontline in Ukraine; and the transfer of workers from North Korea to Russia or China to finance Kim Jong Un’s mass atrocity ego project – these are all part of the same picture: the trafficking of people to fuel war or fund repression.
Those of us who cherish human dignity, believe in human freedom, and defend human rights must oppose and defeat this appalling nexus of slavery and terror. And we must hold the perpetrators and traffickers accountable.
This article was originally published in The Diplomat.