North Korea is using child labor to keep its elite ski resort open

An undated picture released from North Korea&#039;s official Korean Central News Agency shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un

(Image credit: Stringer/Getty Images)

published 28 January 2017

Men, women, and even children are working to clear snowy roads on the way to North Korea's elite Masikryong ski resort, an NBC News report finds. Equipped with only sticks, pickaxes, and makeshift shovels, the laborers — who look to be as young as 11 — were not observed to have any salt or snowplows to help them clear "dozens of miles" of snowy roads.

At the end of those roads are Masikryong slopes, a world-class ski resort frequented only by the wealthy or well-connected few of North Korean society. "They will swim in its half-Olympic sized pool, drink imported French cognac and Scotch whisky in its bars — there is no sign of successful sanctions here — and eat delicious fish from the nearby sea," all before driving home "past the massed and huddled work gangs toiling through the day, hacking away at the snow and ice."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.