Treasury fires a broadside at Kim Jong-un’s slave labor racket

This blog has promoted the outstanding investigative work and legal analysis of the Leiden Asia Center in exposing North Korea’s rental of forced labor to European shipyards and construction companies, under unsafe and exploitative conditions. That work, ably led by Remco Breuker, yielded this Vice documentary and reports filled with actionable information. 

Recently, Breuker wrote a long, sad, and funny opinion piece lamenting that LAC’s research has incurred much harassment from Pyongyang’s wacky bands of online sympathizers while having little apparent effect on the EU’s enforcement of its worker protection laws. That’s why I was so pleased to be the one to tell Mr. Breuker that, thanks in part to LAC’s work, the U.S. Treasury Department just froze the assets of several North Korean slave merchants LAC first identified.

OFAC designated the Mansudae Overseas Project Group of Companies, Korea General Corporation for External Construction, Namgang Construction, and Korea Rungrado General Trading Corporation for having engaged in, facilitated, or been responsible for the exportation of workers from North Korea, including exportation to generate revenue for the Government of North Korea or the Workers’ Party of Korea.  The Mansudae Overseas Project Group of Companies has been reported to conduct business in countries including Algeria, Angola, Botswana, Benin, Cambodia, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Mozambique, Madagascar, Namibia, Senegal, Syria, Togo, and Zimbabwe.  Korea General Corporation for External Construction has worked to supply North Korean laborers in the Middle East for the purpose of earning hard currency for the North Korean regime.  Namgang Construction has worked to supply North Korean laborers in the Middle East and Asia for the same purposes.  The Korea Rungrado General Trading Corporation also works to supply North Korean laborers in Asia and Africa to earn foreign currency for the North Korean regime.  Some of the revenue generated by overseas laborers is used by the Munitions Industry Department, which was designated by the Department of State in August 2010 pursuant to E.O. 13382 for its support to North Korea’s WMD program. [U.S. Treasury Dep’t Press Release]

Leiden Asia Center’s work also had a greater impact on EU states’ policy than he acknowledges, even if that impact may be an indirect one. Poland and Malta have come under media and diplomatic pressure from the U.S. and South Korea over their acceptance of North Korean workers. Both have since stopped issuing visas to more of them. Per capita, Pyongyang’s slave laborers in the EU brought it its highest profits. There’s little question that the Leiden Asia Center’s work was the impetus for much of this change.

There are some notable exceptions. Mansudae Overseas Project Group was exposed by the 2016 report of the U.N. Panel of Experts for helping to build an arms factory in Namibia (a topic that merits its own post). Treasury’s list also omits one of the North Korean entities exposed by LAC and Vice, the DPRK Chamber of Commerce, which lists two Pyongyang addresses: “c/o Ministry of Foreign Trade, Central District, micom@co.chesin.com,” and “Jungsong-dong, Central District, P.O.Box 89.”

Once again, Treasury’s authority for the designations was Executive Order 13722, And once again, the executive order implements section 104(a) of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act. 

Sec. 2. (a) All property and interests in property that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of any United States person of the following persons are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State:

[….]

   (iv) to have engaged in, facilitated, or been responsible for the exportation of workers from North Korea, including exportation to generate revenue for the Government of North Korea or the Workers’ Party of Korea; [EO 13722]

If diplomatic pressure was already starting to constrict Pyongyang’s slave trade before these new sanctions, it’s reasonable to expect that the freezing of the slave merchants’ assets and a new U.N. resolution expressing “concern” about the trade will give those efforts new impetus. Pyongyang still has some stubborn customers in Qatar, Kuwait, and Malaysia who might be persuaded to terminate those relationships.

Will Pyongyang simply shift those workers to China and Russia? Those markets may also be reaching the point of saturation. Employers of North Korean laborers in Russia have recently been embarrassed by a series of on-the-job deaths and injuries, defections, reports of torture and mutilation by local minders, video of a mass brawl with Russian workers, and at least one suicide by self-immolation. Even in China, Reuters recently suggested that the number of expatriate North Korean workers is declining. That, too, may be a function of defections, which have caused Pyongyang great embarrassment and forced it to plow some of its profits back into the deployment of more minders, and minders for the minders. The death spiral swirls.