SEOUL – North Koreans have been forced to work on Chinese-flagged fishing vessels without touching land for as long as a decade, facing verbal and physical abuse as well as harsh conditions, a report said Monday.
Nuclear-armed North Korea has long made a fortune from an army of citizens it sends abroad to work, mostly in neighboring China and Russia.
A 2017 UN Security Council resolution, supported by China, required countries to deport North Korean workers to prevent them earning foreign currency for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
But analysts have accused Beijing and Moscow of circumventing the measures.
And Monday’s report by the London-based Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) alleges widespread abuses of North Korean workers at sea, in violation of sanctions.
“North Koreans onboard were forced to work for as many as 10 years at sea — in some instances without ever stepping foot on land,” the report said.
“This would constitute forced labor of a magnitude that surpasses much of that witnessed in a global fishing industry already replete with abuse.”
The claims were based on interviews with over a dozen Indonesian and Filipino crew members who worked onboard Chinese tuna longliners in the Indian Ocean between 2019 and 2024.
“They never communicated with their wives or others while at sea as they were not allowed to bring a mobile phone,” one crew member was quoted as saying.
