The United Nations on Tuesday denounced a deeply institutionalized system of forced labor in North Korea, which in some cases could amount to slavery, a crime against humanity.
In a damning report, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights details how the inhabitants of this reclusive country under the yoke of a dictatorial regime are “controlled and exploited by a vast, multi-level system of forced labour”.
“The testimonies contained in this report provide a shocking and distressing insight into the suffering inflicted by forced labour, both in its scale and in the level of violence and inhumane treatment,” High Commissioner Volker Türk said in a statement.
“These people are forced to work in intolerable conditions, often in dangerous sectors, without pay, without choice, without the possibility of leaving, without protection, without medical care, without leave, without food and without shelter,” he denounced.
Many of them are regularly beaten and women are “constantly exposed to risks of sexual violence,” he insisted.
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights drew on a variety of sources to compile this report, including 183 interviews conducted between 2015 and 2023 with victims and witnesses who managed to flee North Korea and are living abroad.
“Shock Brigades”
“If we did not meet the daily quota, we were beaten and our food rations were reduced,” said one of the victims.
These accusations are not new. A landmark report by a team of UN investigators a decade ago had already documented forced labor among other widespread rights abuses in North Korea, including executions, rape, torture, deliberate starvation and the detention of 120,000 people in a network of prison camps.
Tuesday’s report focused on an institutionalized system with six different types of forced labor, including in detention and during the minimum 10-year military conscription.
There are also state-assigned compulsory jobs and the use of revolutionary “Shock Brigades,” or state-organized groups of citizens forced to perform “hard manual labor,” often in construction and agriculture, the new document reports.
There are also other forms of forced mobilization such as sending workers abroad, a source of foreign currency that is always under strict control.
“Slavery”
The system “acts as a means for the state to control, monitor and indoctrinate the population,” the UN said.
“In some cases, the level of control, the type of treatment and the level of exploitation of people subjected to forced labour may amount to ‘ownership’,” the report states, which could “constitute a crime against humanity.”
The most serious concerns relate to places of detention, where victims of forced labour are systematically forced to work under threat of physical violence and in inhumane conditions, the UN stresses.
After completing their education or military service, every North Korean is assigned to a job by the state, which dictates where they must live.
A system that meets all the criteria of “institutionalized forced labor in the country.”
The UN calls on North Korea to “end forced labor in all its forms,” ”end slavery and slavery-like practices” and “abolish the use of child labor.”
It also calls on the international community to “ensure strict due diligence in any economic engagement” with North Korea and to ensure that any work carried out by North Koreans abroad “is voluntary in nature, adequately compensated for workers, and carried out under decent working conditions.”
He also called on the UN Security Council to involve the International Criminal Court.