Background: forced labour in north korea

The flow of undocumented North Korean migrants into China began in the mid-1990s and continues to this day. The great majority of these migrants are not fleeing political oppression, but rather food shortages and economic crisis in North Korea.

In March 2007, the North Korean Government requested assistance from the World Food Programme (WFP) to help address the food shortages. The WFP estimated at this time that between a third and a half of North Koreans face a daily struggle to find enough food to eat. As long as food insecurity remains a critical issue, the cross-border migration of undocumented North Koreans into China will also continue.

Forced labour

Those North Koreans who are caught while crossing the border, or who are deported by the Chinese authorities, are then subject to forced labour in North Korean prison camps. In order to document this, Anti-Slavery International conducted research in 2006-07 which involved interviews with 30 North Koreans who were caught crossing the border.

The overwhelming majority of those interviewed had to perform forced labour while in detention in North Korea before they were prosecuted for the crime of border crossing. In 70 per cent of these cases, those arrested received no judicial decision, formal or otherwise.

Illegal action

These unconvicted detainees were compelled to perform forced labour for an average of about 50 days, in direct breach of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as North Korea 's own domestic standards.

The fact that undocumented North Koreans in China will be subject to forced labour if repatriated means that they are entitled to international protection as refugees sur place, as recognised by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea.

Nature of the exploitation

Most of the border crossers interviewed worked 10-12 hours a day with no rest days. Forced labour usually takes place on state-run projects and includes farming, mountain logging, road works, stone quarrying, brick making, coal mining and construction.

Prisoners were beaten for various reasons such as lying or being suspected of lying, not working fast enough, or forgetting the words to patriotic songs. More than 90 per cent of the interviewees either witnessed beatings or were hit themselves while in detention.

The overcrowded and unhygienic facilities, combined with inadequate food and the arduous nature of the forced labour that prisoners have to perform mean that deaths in the labour camps are not uncommon.

The vast majority of border crossers are simply trying to exercise their right to freedom of movement in order to sustain themselves and their families. The arrest and imposition of forced labour on border crossers is not acceptable and must be brought to an end immediately.

Forced labour and slavery

Forced labour is any work or service which people are made to do against their will under the threat of some form of punishment.

Forced labour is a contemporary form of slavery, which has a number of key characteristics:

• forced to work, through mental or physical threat;
• controlled by an ‘employer', under the threat of some form of punishment;
• dehumanised, treated as commodity or bought and sold as ‘property';
• physically constrained or has restrictions placed on their freedom of movement.

Chul Hee's story

Ri Chul Hee left North Korea in 1998 because of the food shortages. In 2004, he was arrested in China and deported for the fourth time. The North Korean authorities sentenced him to 13 months in a labour training camp for illegal border crossing.

“There were about 25 prisoners at the Musan labour training camp. We were forced to carry out logging in the mountains. It was my responsibility to take the logs that other prisoners had cut and carry them 200 metres down the mountain using wire strings. My hands would bleed because the wire strings cut into my skin but I still had to continue working. I wasn't hit by the prison guards but others were when they didn't cut or carry down enough logs.

We also quarried stones and carried them down the mountain. One young man in his early twenties couldn't do the work because he was so hungry and the work was too much for him. So, he hid in one area and slept. He was discovered by one of the guards who then had all the team leaders punished by making them move heavy rocks from one place to another – about 100 metres apart – until he said stop. The team leader responsible for the sleeping prisoner was so angry that he took a stick and beat the prisoner's back and legs. The prisoner couldn't walk for three weeks. He suffered a fracture in one leg.”

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