Human rights official Marzuki Darusman claims 50,000 workers are being exploited to generate up to £1.5bn a year for the state

Tens of thousands of North Koreans are being sent to work abroad in conditions that amount to forced labour, to circumvent United Nations sanctions and earn up to $2.3bn (£1.5bn) in foreign currency for the country, a UN investigator has said.

Marzuki Darusman, the special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said in a report to the UN general assembly and at a news conference on Wednesday that the workers are being used as a new source of income, with North Korea facing a “really tight financial and economic situation”.

He accused the country’s government of violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which bans forced labour and to which North Korea is a party. Darusman said companies hiring North Korean workers have “become complicit in an unacceptable system of forced labour”.

Darusman said more than 50,000 North Korean workers are employed in foreign countries, mainly in the mining, logging, textile and construction industries, according to various studies – and added that the number is rising.

Countries hosting North Korean workers may be breaching UN sanctions Read more

The vast majority are working in China and Russia, he said, but others are reportedly employed in countries including Algeria, Angola, Cambodia, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Oman, Poland, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Darusman said civil society organisations report that these workers earn $120-$150 per month on average and are sometimes forced to work up to 20 hours a day, with only one or two rest days a month and insufficient food. Employers pay “significantly higher amounts” to the North Korean government, he claimed.

Former workers interviewed by the rights groups said jobs are assigned according to the worker’s state-assigned social class, with those in lower classes given the most dangerous and tedious tasks. They also reported being under constant surveillance by the North Koreans in charge of ensuring that they comply with government rules and regulations, he said.

Darusman praised a construction company in Qatar for dismissing 90 North Korean workers in May – nearly half its workforce – for alleged repeated violations of domestic labour legislation. According to the company, which was not named, supervisors were forcing them to work more than 12 hours a day.

Darusman cited a report by the International Network for the Human Rights of North Korean Overseas Labor in 2012 that said North Korea earns between $1.2bn and $2.3bn annually from their labour.

The UN investigator put the spotlight on forced labour as a human rights violation in his report, which also cited summary executions, arbitrary detention, torture, widespread ill-treatment of individuals in political prison camps and severe discrimination based on social class.

“The near total denial of human rights in the country revolves around ... instilling fear within the minds and hearts of the population,” Darusman said.

He “remains convinced” that the UN security council should refer North Korea’s human rights situation to the International criminal court, to bring to justice those most responsible for the denial of human rights, “including those at the highest level of decision making”. But such a move is likely to be vetoed by China and possibly Russia. Pyongyang has previously tried to cultivate both as allies.

Darusman said he has met with Chinese diplomats in Geneva and New York and had constructive discussions on how to get North Korea to engage more with the international community. In these discussions, he said, “it did come out that their relations with North Korea are quite strained in recent times”.

He said the economic hardships in North Korea had led people to fend for themselves and gradually become less dependent on the government for survival.

“We are hearing credible reports about small businesses being established, small plots, gardening and farming activities, the beginnings of a property market, the widespread use of mobile phones, the illegal imports of South Korean pop music and videos and a host of other issues that gives an image that incremental changes are taking place in the North,” Darusman said.