North Korea's stranded migrant workers

Hermit kingdom sent labourers overseas to fund cash-starved regime and weapons programme, but shut borders during pandemic

Photo composite of migrant workers in China
For more than 30 years, North Korea has been sending workers abroad to support its sanctions-hit economy
(Image credit: Illustration by Stephen Kelly / Getty Images)

Thousands of North Koreans working illegally in China have reportedly rioted to demand years of unpaid wages alleged to have been spent on funding Pyongyang's war machine.

About 2,500 North Korean labourers were owed a total of $10 million, Cho Han-bum, a research fellow at the Korean Institute for National Unification think tank, told NK News. Workers in 15 Pyongyang-operated factories in northeastern China are said to have "erupted" into riots after discovering that their wages had instead "been put towards building weapons", said BBC News

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Harriet Marsden is a writer for The Week, mostly covering UK and global news and politics. Before joining the site, she was a freelance journalist for seven years, specialising in social affairs, gender equality and culture. She worked for The Guardian, The Times and The Independent, and regularly contributed articles to The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, The New Statesman, Tortoise Media and Metro, as well as appearing on BBC Radio London, Times Radio and “Woman’s Hour”. She has a master’s in international journalism from City University, London, and was awarded the "journalist-at-large" fellowship by the Local Trust charity in 2021.