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| Korea |
| Russia turns to North Korea for cheap labor |
| 2003-05-19 |
| EFL Amid the construction dust of a faux Southern California shopping mall, where cream walls, marble floors and luxury boutiques were taking shape, a construction worker resolutely pushed his wheelbarrow, ignoring a poster of a lingerie model, dressed in little more than a black cowboy hat. "The North Koreans are great, they don't smoke, they don't drink," said Grigoryi Akhoyan, the Armenian developer of the downtown mall here. "I have friends in California who employ Mexicans. I think North Koreans work just as hard." Yes, but they work for their own benefit. North Korean construction workers are now so numerous here that one recent morning an American diplomat noticed a North Korean crew plastering the bomb-barrier flower boxes in front of the United States Consulate. They were replaced by Russian workers. In an inheritance from Soviet days, as many as 10,000 North Koreans work in the Russian Far East under a contract worker system. North Korea provides cheap labor under tight controls to the region, which is short of labor, but fears Asian immigration. Sort of like a staffing company, but different. With North Korea now the poorest nation in Northeast Asia, all of its neighbors — China, South Korea, Russia and Japan — have adopted contingency plans to block a sudden outflow of migrants in case the Communist government collapses. But while Japan, South Korea and Russia lack workers willing to do dirty and dangerous jobs, only Russia has been willing to accept North Koreans as guest workers. "It is good the North Korean workers are here," Yuri Kopylov, Vladivostok's mayor, said. "They work all day long. There is no competition between North Koreans and Russians. There is work for everybody." And vodka for us. The arrangement allows the North Korean government to milk the maximum money from the workers, who generally come here on three-year contracts. Most of their wages are retained or collected by the North Korean state companies that bring them here, workers and employers here said. Two North Koreans interviewed at an apartment renovation project here said their unit leader told them they must earn a minimum of $400 (12,356 rubles) a month, (close to the local minimum wage), which for most means moonlighting at private jobs. They are allowed to keep $100. This money, the men said, they send home to their families or carry back on their yearly vacations. Although they often work 16-hour days, sleeping in apartments they are renovating, they said they considered themselves lucky to be working in Russia and hoped to renew their contracts. The men asked not be identified in any way, saying that they could be harshly punished for talking about North Korea to foreigners. One man drew his fingers across his throat in a universal sign of execution. "The men coming here realize they are prisoners of the system," Akhoyan, the Armenian developer, said, referring to North Korea's hold over workers. "But all the workers come here willingly. And when the contract is over, they seem to regret going." He said he paid "about the same amount of money" to his 60 North Koreans as to Russians with the same skills. The advantage to him, he explained, "is that the Koreans do a greater volume of work." Literally a regime that will work for food. In the Russian Far East, North Korea's tightly controlled migrant worker system is welcomed by local authorities worried that uncontrolled Asian migration could end 150 years of European dominance here. On a visit to the region two summers ago, Kim Jong Il told an aide to President Vladimir Putin that the Russian authorities had his permission to shoot any North Koreans found dealing in drugs. Unless Kimmie gets a cut too. North Korea's worker control system is especially harsh in remote Siberian logging camps which, according to Amnesty International, are directly run by North Korea's ruthless Public Security Service. Escapees interviewed in Moscow in recent years have told human rights researchers that the North Korean camp authorities maintain private prisons and prevent escapes by rationing food and punishing would-be escapees with torture and sometimes execution. During the Soviet era, most logging in Siberia was done by prisoners in forced labor camps. The Russians rationalize this by saying the laborers are better off than their countrymen, but morally this is only a half step from the gulag. |
| Posted by:JAB |