Global Rights Compliance has recently launched the report “A Day in the Life of a DPRK State-Imposed Labourer in St. Petersburg, Russia”
Since the report was published, the authors of the report, Yeji Kim and Lara Strangways, have been quoted in around 30 leading global media outlets. As noted by Yeji Kim for NBC News, “Abolition of state-sponsored forced labour remains the ultimate goal, but it cannot be the only answer when workers need protection today”. Read the full piece here.
Listen to Yeji Kim’s conversation on Deutsche Welle’s Inside Europe podcast, which reveals the horrific conditions leaving workers physically and psychologically trapped and the gruelling working hours and state-imposed quotas – which most workers were never even told about (timestamp 33:00 via the link)
As noted by Lara Strangways in The Sun “It reveals not only the durability of the overseas labour model, but also the weakness of current enforcement and accountability measures.”
The report received coverage in leading media in
✒️ US (‘North Korean laborers describe brutal forced labor in Russia: ‘Working like a cow, earning nothing’),
✒️ South Korea (‘North Korean workers in Russia endure abuse, near-zero pay: report’),
✒️ France (It’s worse than slavery”: In Russia, thousands of North Koreans are being forced into a forced labor program’),
✒️ Hong Kong (‘Rights group exposes North Korea’s forced labour scheme that reaps US $500 million annually’) and
✒️ Ukraine (‘Звіт GRC: Росія використовує примусову роботу громадян Північної Кореї на будівництвах‘).
Broad coverage of the report is aimed at disseminating information about violations of workers’ rights as widely as possible. As mentioned by Yeji Kim, “These are not statistics. These are the documented conditions facing thousands of North Korean workers trapped in DPRK State-sponsored Forced Labour in Russia”. The ultimate goal is to abolish state-sponsored forced labour.
Read the full report here.