Exploiting their official role in order to earn in foreign currency as labor suppliers, North Korean consulates to China have introduced North

Korean laborers to Chinese businesses in the textiles and seafood industries

for 200 Yuan a head per month, Daily NK has learned.

“Starting from about a few years ago, officials in the North

Korean consulates in China started to provide young female workers to ethnic

Korean owned toll processing businesses for a fee. Recently, one such consulate has

been receiving a 200-Yuan per month fee in similar transactions with a wig-making

factory. The fee in this case is transferred from the worker’s account in

accordance with the contract,” a North Korean source currently residing in

China reported to Daily NK on March 18.

This development was corroborated by an additional source close to the issue in China.

The brokering of these deals originated in Shenyang, where ethnic Korean

managers of seafood processing and packaging, textiles manufacturing, and wig

and artificial eyebrow making factories started hiring young, cheap female

workers from Pyongyang. The number of Chinese businesses looking to hire young,

pretty, 20-something natives of Pyongyang is so large that the consulates have

stepped in to facilitate.

Demand from Chinese businesses in the Northeast cities of

Jilin, Heilongjiang, and Liaoning quickly built on the momentum, meeting supply from North

Korean authorities looking to export labor for a profit. There is a heavy

emphasis on beautiful young girls from big cities like the capital. Even now,

in the face of strict primary and secondary sanctions targeting the North

Korean regime, the demand for young North Korean female workers has not abated.

This is unlikely to change, according to the source, who suggested that the power of consulates to manage

these operations should not be dismissed. “North Korean consulates

operate as part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Their function is partly to

read the current domestic and international situation as it relates to trade.

They therefore have a monopoly over such information that they can make good

use of. North Korea-China merchants and managers of joint ventures active in

border cities such as Dandong, Beijing, and Shenyang cannot afford to ignore

the power of the consulates,” she said.

“The consulates use their privileged access to

information about overseas market trends to engage in illegal foreign-currency

earning schemes. The consulate has been known to assist managers of North

Korean trading companies by helping them secure favorable contracts with

Chinese companies on the rise in exchange for bribes that can be worth tens of

thousands of dollars.”

By the source’s estimates, there are approximately 100

companies in Dandong and Shenyang that are employing young North Korean females.

Of these companies, the vast majority paid a fee to the consulate in exchange

for the workers. “But since this intermediation has been done and paid for in

secret, it is difficult to know just how long it has been going on for,” she noted.

“The consulates have used their authority in order to expand

their secret foreign-currency earning operations. The Consul General is closing

his eyes and putting out his hand, allowing this to happen for a bribe. There

have been plenty of cases of cadres at consulates who were unable to get

the hang of this secret business scheme. The ones who aren’t able to earn money

and then hand over loyalty funds to superiors are given the axe in due course

and sent back home.”