By Yeji Kim
In 2024, the United Nations reported that more than 100,000 workers from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) are employed overseas, generating vital revenue for the DPRK. Dispatched to approximately 40 countries and spread across sectors from construction to medicine, sewing, IT, and food service, these workers form one of the regime’s most significant sources of foreign income. But behind these numbers is a system built not on choice or opportunity, but on coercion.
Any meaningful conversation about accountability on DPRK overseas labour programme must start with survivors themselves. For communities who have lived through state-engineered exploitation, accountability is not theoretical, it is a direct demand for safety, dignity, redress, and protection for those still at risk. Few cases make this clearer than the DPRK’s system of state-imposed forced labour, where workers are surveilled, stripped of wages, and held hostage by threat of retaliation against their families at home.
Global Rights Compliance, together with our local partner, spoke to survivors now living in South Korea. Their testimonies offer a rare window into what accountability means when those most affected are given the opportunity to define it.
Here are the five things North Korean state-imposed forced labour survivors say accountability must include.
- Accountability must start with basic dignity and protection for those still trapped in the system.
When survivors talk about accountability, they don’t often begin by discussing the need for courts or truth commissions. They begin with a simple demand: a need to stop the everyday harm. They recall that workers are still waking up in metal shipping containers, labouring twelve to sixteen hours a day in freezing conditions and living under pervasive surveillance. One respondent highlighted the need to “grant workers the same basics other migrants enjoy – phone access, 8-hour days, weekends”. Others pointed at the enablers: stating that Russia and China “must stop underwriting forced-labour deployments”.
- Accountability means creating escape routes that are safe, fast, and predictable because for many the danger continues after they run.
Survivors describe a reality that the outside world rarely sees: if they are able to flee, they enter a maze of police checks, visa traps, interrogations, and long periods of hiding; entirely dependent on the laws and politics of countries that may, at any moment, hand them back to the State. More than one survivor said the waiting itself felt like another form of punishment. R1 explained that the long delays [in Russian detention facility] before South Korean entry “drove they/them crazy.” R4 described how those who escape through Russia face far longer asylum delays than people who come through China, even though both groups risk forced repatriation. As R5 put it, the bare minimum is to “guarantee pathways for workers who flee to reach safety.” Accountability must therefore mean fast, predictable admissions as well as protection from refoulement.
- Accountability requires uncovering the truth about workers’ stolen wages and returning what was taken.
Every survivor we spoke with described the same system: brutal working hours, with the state collecting nearly all renumeration for the work done. Economic exploitation was not a by-product of the system but rather a deliberate strategy to generate foreign currency for Pyongyang. Survivors want the truth exposed. R2 put it plainly: “Expose where the foreign currency went, return the wages.” Others insisted that material compensation must come from the perpetrator: North Korea (R7). Some asked whether wages seized in Russia could ever be reclaimed, not out of optimism but out of a need for recognition (R6). For survivors, returning wages, even symbolically, is an essential act of truth-telling as it acknowledges both the labour and the theft.
- Survivors say accountability must include responsibility for the people who ordered, enabled, and enforced forced labour.
Survivors were unequivocal: accountability is incomplete without identifying the individuals responsible. As one participant emphasised, this includes thorough fact-finding and pursuit of accountability for officials, managers, and security agents who enforced quota labour (R7). Others highlighted the need for a unified international approach; for example, R3 stressed that powerful states must stop shielding Pyongyang. Several also called for justice reaching the highest levels of leadership, with R6 urging consistency from South Korea regardless of domestic politics. Additional participants underscored the importance of coordinated pressure on Russia and China to comply with international labour standards (R8). Collectively, survivors’ insights, rooted in deep, lived knowledge of the system, underscore their expectation that accountability efforts reflect this reality.
- Survivors believe accountability must include reintegration, mental-health support, and freedom from stigma in the countries where they rebuild their lives.
Escape may end physical control, but it does not end the psychological and social burden survivors carry: the fear for family members still in North Korea (R4), the disorientation of starting over in a completely new society, and the shame or silence that follows years of surveillance and indoctrination. To counter this, survivors emphasised the need for safe counselling spaces, peer groups, and practical training to help them be independent after years of state control (R5). One of the persistent barriers identified was the stigma in South Korea. “Break social prejudice…that blocks defectors from good jobs,” R9 said. Survivors emphasised psychological support, public recognition, and job-training programmes that allow them to compete fairly (R7).
Conclusion
Survivors have outlined a practical roadmap for accountability. And while human rights lawyers often think of accountability in terms of systemic reform or prosecuting perpetrators, the interviewees focused first on immediate relief and basic remedies. They also highlighted a difficult truth the international community cannot overlook: North Korea’s overseas labour programme exploits workers while simultaneously giving them a rare window to the wider world. Any credible response must grapple with this paradox.
Survivors have outlined a practical roadmap for accountability. And while human rights lawyers often think of accountability in terms of systemic reform or prosecuting perpetrators, survivors focused first on immediate relief and basic remedies. They also highlighted a difficult truth the international community cannot afford to ignore: North Korea’s overseas labour programme exploits workers while simultaneously giving some a rare window to the wider world. Any credible response must grapple with this paradox.
For governments and institutions, that means enforcing labour standards in host countries, preventing forced returns, and targeting the financial and political actors who profit from the system, while avoiding measures that unintentionally close the limited apertures through which some workers gain information or a chance to flee. For companies, it means tracing supply chains and eliminating dependence on coerced labour. For civil society, it means grounding advocacy in the needs that survivors themselves prioritise. In short, accountability must be both protective and precise: strong enough to challenge exploitation, yet careful enough not to eliminate the few pathways that allow North Koreans to reach freedom. Survivors have already defined the contours of what works. The world’s responsibility is now to act accordingly.