According to the organization’s report, workers “are placed under constant surveillance” and “regularly beaten”
The UN (United Nations) said that the “use of forced labor“in North Korea against citizens is something”deeply institutionalized”. In report (fullin English – PDF – 579 kB), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has stated that, in some cases, slavery, a crime against humanity, is established.
According to the UN, the report is based on several sources, including 183 interviews conducted from 2015 to 2023 with victims and witnesses of forced labor who managed to escape and live outside North Korea.These people are forced to work in intolerable conditions.”said Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Türk stated that North Koreans are forced to work in “dangerous sectors” It is “with no pay, free choice, possibility to leave, protection, medical care, time off, food and shelter”.
These workers “are placed under constant surveillance” It is “beaten regularly“. Furthermore, “women are exposed to ongoing risks of sexual violence”.
The report analyzes six distinct types of forced labor. These include government-mandated jobs and military conscription. The UN also cited so-called “Shock Brigades,” groups of citizens organized by the state and forced to perform “heavy manual work”, often in construction and agriculture.
The report concludes that people in North Korea are “controlled and exploited through an extensive and multifaceted system of forced labor” what is “directed towards the interests of the State and not towards the people”. The system, the report says, “acts as a means for the State to control, monitor and indoctrinate the population”.
According to the document, every North Korean is assigned to a workplace by the state after completing school or military service. The UN stated that the lack of free choice of work, the inability to form unions, the threat of arrest for failure to show up for work, and the continued non-payment of wages “paint a picture of institutionalized forced labor in the country”.
The North Korean government also sends its citizens abroad to work. Workers have reported sending up to 90% of their salaries to the state and being placed under constant surveillance, with no freedom of movement. They have had their passports confiscated, are kept in cramped quarters, have almost no time off and have extremely limited opportunities to contact their families.
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