By William Tucker
Chief Correspondent for In Homeland Security
According to a United Nations human rights expert, more than 50,000 North Koreans are currently working under conditions that amount to forced labor in foreign countries – all at the behest of the government in Pyongyang.
North Korea is engaging in this behavior – and has done so for many years – as a way of earning cash for the dictatorial regime. Most workers are sent to Russia or China, but other nations in Asia and the Middle East are also complicit in this forced labor.
The workers that are put into this program are told that they will make more money than they do at home, but 95 percent of their salary is sent directly to the North Korean government. Last week I wrote about a high-level defector that left the North Korean government and has been allegedly spilling secrets to the South Koreans and my previous article and this article intersect. For any dictatorial regime to remain in power, they must pay off a number of their supporters to maintain loyalty. North Korea has been under economic sanctions for quite some time and, as a result, the government has turned to organized crime style endeavors to continue these payments and maintain loyalty among the upper echelon.
North Korea’s endeavors in organized crime have been quite remarkable. Pyongyang runs drug smuggling operations through their embassies, they have engaged in poaching in Africa and made money off the ivory trade, and they show impressive skill in counterfeiting U.S. currency. With regards to the latter, the U.S. government was actually forced to redesign the hundred dollar bill because of North Korean counterfeiting operations.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that North Korea would also engage in human trafficking to make money for the regime. U.S. officials have taken to calling North Korea the “Soprano State” as a result of their illicit activities. The bulk of these activities are run by Bureau 39, an office under the control of The Korean Workers Party Central Committee. When Kim Jong Un assumed Control of the government in Pyongyang, he fostered a cozy relationship with Jon Il-chun – the chief of Bureau 39.
It’s difficult to solve the issue of North Korea’s human trafficking problem because so many members of the regime are heavily invested in criminal activity. Furthermore, Kim Jong Un survives by ensuring the flow of hard currency to the government and to his most loyal supporters. The U.S. and its allies have struggled to stop the criminal enterprise of North Korea with the intention of forcing the regime to turn to a legal economy.
However, to do that, Pyongyang would have to reform its behavior and that would undermine its propaganda efforts at home and perhaps lose the support of the military. For North Korea, everything is a balancing act to maintain regime stability. Any shift toward a legitimate government could alienate key factors that play a role in stabilizing the regime. For those looking to reform North Korea, this makes the diplomatic task nearly impossible.
Any diplomatic effort now and in the future will likely focus on very narrow objectives. Therefore, anything that will change the regime will not come from outside forces but most likely come from internal government problems.
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