The North Korean Workers in Russia: Problematizing the "Forced Labor" Discourse

In recent years, North Korean workers overseas have begun to attract increasing attention of the international media, human rights activists, and academics. They are often depicted as being "modern-day slaves," but the present article challenges this approach. It relies on a number of sources, including interviews with former workers (currently residing outside North Korea) and their Russian employers. In many regards, overseas North Korean workers face problematic circumstances. Nonetheless, workers compete for the opportunity to go overseas, since the overseas work, in spite of all hardships, is much preferable to all jobs they can realistically have at home. Rather than seeing themselves as victims, more or less all our interviewees perceive themselves as active and entrepreneurial individuals who succeeded in securing work that, in spite of hard conditions, opens avenues for upward social mobility. They faced constraints and difficulties, of which they are all too aware, but also had agency to act within these constraints. We offer a critical examination of the "forced labor" claim and the applicability of the International Labour Organization's Forced Labour Convention to the issue.