'Alarming': Report says North Korean overseas labour financing nuclear weapons

A host of Western governments and US allies say North Korea's network of illegal labourers in Russia and China raised between $US450 million ($633 million) and $US800 million last year for Kim Jong Un's nuclear weapons program, helping Pyongyang evade United Nations sanctions.

Human rights groups have long decried North Korea's forced labour program, saying thousands of workers are subjected to control, abuse and coercion as they earn hard cash for the regime.

In 2024 a coalition of developed countries set up the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) to monitor North Korea's efforts to dodge sanctions after Russia used its Security Council veto to dismantle a UN panel of experts tracking the issue.

This morning that same coalition — which draws in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, the US and the UK — issued a report detailing the "systemic evasion of UN sanctions by the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] and other countries through a global network of unlawful overseas labour".

The report says that North Korea maintains an army of between 35,000 and 101,000 labourers overseas.

While at least 17 countries are "suspected of continuing to host labourers" from North Korea the vast majority are working in Russia and China.

China has always denied hosting illegal workers from North Korea — and pushed out at least 10,000 workers between 2023 and 2025 — but human rights groups and investigative reporters have documented how thousands can still be found working in Chinese factories, plants and fishing fleets.

The MSMT report estimates that China still hosts between 20,000 and 70,000 North Korean labourers.

North Korea is also sending increasing numbers of labourers to Russia, which the report says has created a student visa scheme to "camouflage" North Korean labourers.

Moscow and Pyongyang have formed an increasingly tight military and strategic partnership in the last three years, with North Korea emerging as one of Russia's key backers in its invasion of Ukraine.

The MSMT report estimates there are between 15,000 and 30,000 working in Russia "as of the end of 2025", with North Korean labourers manufacturing military drones on Russian soil to bolster Vladimir Putin's war effort.

"Overseas North Korean labourers face low wages, work 12 to 18 hours per day, six or seven days per week, and are required to forfeit 80-90 per cent of their income — or more — to the DPRK government," the report says.

"Labourers are also charged an additional fee of up to 30 per cent of the funds they send as remittances to family, in addition to paying other fees, including those related to travel, food, and lodging.

"Often, this amounts up to complete wage confiscation."

Lara Strangways from the international human rights foundation Global Rights Compliance called the report "alarming" and said it validated the work done by several watchdog groups.

"North Korean workers are being channelled through Russian labour brokers into a system built on debt bondage, confiscated documents and constant surveillance, generating hard currency for Pyongyang," she said.

"This is a problem which must be urgently confronted as the scale and breadth of state-sponsored forced labour expands due to the DPRK's intensifying need for foreign currency.

"The labour brokers facilitating these arrangements, and the companies profiting from this exploitation, must be identified and sanctioned."

The governments behind the joint report have not committed to any new sanctions on Russian or Chinese companies, but said in their joint statement they were "sharing this information with the international community to highlight the significant risks associated with employing North Korean overseas labourers and the need to deter the employment of such labourers".

"We encourage all UN member states to raise awareness and hold responsible parties and facilitators accountable for UNSCR [UN Security Council Resolution] violations, including through domestic action," they said.