Forced labor in North Korea cited as possible crime against humanity

geneva — A report by the United Nations human rights office Tuesday accuses the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) of widespread forced labor, which in some instances “may constitute a crime against humanity of enslavement” under international criminal law.

“The testimonies in this report give a shocking and distressing insight into the suffering inflicted through forced labor upon people, both in its scale and in the levels of violence and inhuman treatment,” Volker Türk, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement to coincide with the release of the report.

“These people are forced to work in intolerable conditions, often in dangerous sectors,” he said. “They are placed under constant surveillance, regularly beaten, while women are exposed to continuing risks of sexual violence.”

The report is based on various sources, including 183 interviews conducted between 2015 and 2023 with victims and witnesses of forced labor who managed to escape and now live abroad.

“The strength of this report is that it is based on a large amount of first-hand information,” James Heenan, representative of the U.N. human rights office in Seoul, told journalists in Geneva, noting that North Korean officials “are fully aware of our concerns.”

According to the report, people in North Korea are controlled and exploited through an extensive and multi-layered system of forced labor that “provides a source of free labor for the state and acts as a means for the state to control, monitor and indoctrinate the population.”

The report identifies six forms of forced labor, which are “institutionalized” through the country’s prisons system, schools, compulsory state-allocated employment, military conscription, “Shock Brigade deployments” and a system of overseas labor.

“Perhaps the most concerning is the forced labor extracted from people in detention,” Heenan said. “These detainees are systematically compelled to work under the threat of punishment or physical violence under inhumane conditions, with little food or health care and disproportionate work quotas.”

Given the almost total control over the civilian population of detainees, the widespread extraction of forced labor in North Korean prisons may “in some instances reach degrees of effective ownership over individuals which is an element of crimes of inhumanity and of enslavement,” he said.

The report finds that the state assigns every North Korean to a workplace after completing school or military service. It says military conscripts, who must serve 10 or more years, are “routinely forced to work in agriculture or construction,” which is described as “hard and dangerous, without adequate health and safety measures.”

A former nurse who worked in the surgery department of a military hospital during her compulsory service told U.N. investigators that “most soldiers who came to the clinic were malnourished and came down with tuberculosis, since they were physically weak and tired.”

Another state-organized system of forced labor mobilizations comes in the form of so-called “Shock Brigades” — state-organized groups of citizens forced to carry out “arduous manual labor,” often in construction and agriculture.

“These people are very often sent very far away from their homes to complete projects under state supervision. It can go on for months. It can go on even for years during which workers are obliged to live on site, with little or no remuneration,” Heenan said.

“The conditions described in the Shock Brigade are indeed shocking,” he said. “Little concerns for health, for safety. Scarce food, scarce shelter, and punishment for failure to meet quotas.”

The report says citizens who are sent to work overseas and earn foreign currency for the government “lose up to 90 percent of their wages to the state.” It says they also lose all freedom of movement. “They are kept under constant surveillance, their passports are confiscated, and they live under appalling conditions, with almost no time off.”

Heenan said there also is a very worrying, appalling situation of child labor in the country, with “children as young as 10 being drafted into forced labor.”

Authors of the report say children are “requested to volunteer extensive periods of their day” to work on farms and in mines, collect wood in the forests, repair railroads and participate in many other initiatives, “which interfere with their rights to education, health, rest and leisure.”

The U.N. human rights report calls on the North Korean government to “abolish the use of forced labor and end any forms of slavery.” It urges the international community to investigate and prosecute those suspected of committing international crimes and calls on the Security Council to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court.

Heenan said North Korean authorities “did not comment” on the report, which was sent to them. However, he added that human rights colleagues in Geneva and other parts of the U.N. system regularly engage with the government. “We do talk to the DPRK.”

“We monitor, we report, but we also engage, and we hope that that engagement will improve some of these issues,” he said.

In his statement, High Commissioner Türk noted that “Decent work, free choice, freedom from violence, and just and favorable conditions of work … must be respected and fulfilled.”

He said, “Economic prosperity should serve people, not be the reason for their enslavement.”