[Reader-list] NYT on cheap Korean labour in Russia

Rana Dasgupta eye at ranadasgupta.com
Sun May 18 20:09:35 IST 2003


May 18, 2003
Russia Turns to a Poor Neighbor for Cheap
Labor
By JAMES BROOKE

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/18/internation
al/asia/18SIBE.html?pagewanted=print&position
=

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia — Amid the construction
dust of a faux Southern California shopping
mall, where cream walls, marble floors and
luxury boutiques were taking shape, a
construction worker resolutely pushed his
wheelbarrow, ignoring a poster of a lingerie
model, dressed in little more than a black
cowboy hat.

"The North Koreans are great, they don't
smoke, they don't drink," said Grigoryi T.
Akhoyan, the Armenian developer of the new
downtown mall here. "I have friends in
California who employ Mexicans. I think North
Koreans work just as hard."

On May Day, Russians here were enjoying their
holiday with a parade and concert by the
docks of this Pacific port. But across an
avenue, two North Korean stonemasons were
working, tapping bricks with mallets to
complete a sidewalk.

"Koreitsi," Russian for Korean, announced 14
classified advertisements listing the
availability of North Korean workers in a
recent issue of the Dalpress newspaper. The
advertisements included words like "fast,"
"cheap" and "quality."

With their numbers rising here, North Korean
construction workers are now so ubiquitous
that one recent morning an American diplomat
noticed a North Korean crew at work
plastering the bomb-barrier flower boxes in
front of the United States Consulate here.
They were replaced with Russian workers.

In an inheritance from Soviet days, as many
as 10,000 North Koreans work in the Russian
Far East under a contract worker system.
North Korea provides cheap labor under tight
controls to the Russian Far East, which is
short of labor, but fears Asian immigration.

By contrast, China gives no legal security to
North Korean economic migrants. In a yearlong
crackdown, China has forcibly sent back tens
of thousands of North Koreans, often to harsh
punishment at home.

With North Korea now the poorest nation in
Northeast Asia, all of its neighbors — China,
South Korea, Russia and Japan — have adopted
contingency plans to block a sudden outflow
of migrants in the event of a collapse of the
Communist government. But while Japan, South
Korea and Russia lack workers willing to do
dirty and dangerous jobs, only Russia has
been willing to accept North Koreans as guest
workers.

"It is good the North Korean workers are
here," Yuri M. Kopylov, Vladivostok's mayor,
said in an impromptu interview on the edge of
a children's folk concert. "They work all day
long. There is no competition between North
Koreans and Russians. There is work for
everybody."

The arrangement allows the North Korean
government to milk the maximum money from the
workers, who generally come here on
three-year contracts. Most of their wages are
retained or collected by the North Korean
state companies that bring them here, workers
and employers interviewed here said.

Two North Koreans interviewed at an apartment
renovation project here said their unit
leader told them they must earn a minimum of
$400 a month (close to the local minimum
wage), which for most means moonlighting at
private jobs. They are allowed to keep $100.
This money, the men said, they either send
home to their families or carry back on their
yearly vacations. Although they often work
16-hour days, sleeping in apartments they are
renovating, they said they considered
themselves lucky to be working in Russia and
hoped to renew their contracts.

The men asked not be identified in any way,
saying that they could be harshly punished
for talking about North Korea to foreigners.
One man drew his fingers across his throat in
a universal sign of execution.

"The men coming here realize they are
prisoners of the system," Mr. Akhoyan said,
referring to North Korea's hold over workers
here. "But all the workers come here
willingly. And when the contract is over,
they seem to regret going."

The Armenian developer said he paid "about
the same amount of money" to his 60 North
Korean workers as to Russians with the same
skills. The advantage to him, he explained,
"is that the Koreans do a greater volume of
work."

His North Korean foreman said in broken
Russian that when his contract expired, he
would "go home." Uneasy about talking with a
foreigner, he said only that in North Korea
he had a wife, son and daughter whom he only
saw once a year during a monthlong vacation.

One North Korean dormitory here is on the
third floor of an old merchant marine
training academy in an industrial suburb. On
a recent morning, about 12 North Korean men
were fishing for dinner off a pier.

In a hallway leading to the dormitory's
sleeping quarters, a red-and-gold banner
brightened the drab interior.

"Our great leader, Comrade Kim Il Sung, will
be with us forever! Hurrah for Gen. Kim Jong
Il, the son of the 21st century!" read the
slogans, referring to North Korea's late
leader and his son and successor.

In the Russian Far East, North Korea's
tightly controlled migrant worker system is
welcomed by local authorities worried that
uncontrolled Asian migration could end 150
years of European dominance here. On a visit
to the region two summers ago, Kim Jong Il
told an aide to President Vladimir V. Putin
that the Russian authorities had his
permission to shoot any North Koreans found
dealing in drugs.

North Korea's worker control system is
especially harsh in remote Siberian logging
camps which, according to Amnesty
International, are directly run by North
Korea's ruthless Public Security Service.
Escapees interviewed in Moscow in recent
years have told human rights researchers that
the North Korean camp authorities maintain
private prisons and prevent escapes by
rationing food and punishing would-be
escapees with torture and sometimes
execution. During the Soviet era, most
logging in Siberia was done by prisoners in
forced labor camps.

Viktor Ishayev, governor of Khabarovsk since
1991, has said in interviews with Russian
reporters over the last year that the Russian
authorities have regained control over the
camps and have reduced the number of North
Koreans loggers.

There used to be 15,000 North Koreans in
labor camps," he said in a news conference in
January. "Now 600 is the quota, mostly in
logging."

On May 3, Ben Christie and Nicholas Wrathall,
two documentary filmmakers, visited the
Alonka camp, a 16-hour train ride and a
3-hour jeep ride from Khabarovsk, a regional
capital. Even though the team had filming
permits from Khabarovsk officials, Mr.
Christie said, North Korean authority was
made clear by a North Korean flag on a crane
emblazoned with Korean slogans.

Mr. Christie recalled in a interview what
happened when the workers spotted the team
filming. "The chief came running up to the
car," he said. "He tried to pull the aerial
off. Then, he tried to pull the door off.
Then he reached inside the car for the
camera."

After the driver turned around, Mr. Christie
said, "they threw a huge rock at the car."

On their return train ride from the town of
Chegdomyn, Mr. Christie and his crew found
and interviewed a North Korean Communist
Party secretary, in full uniform, who had
been attending a meeting for camp overseers
in Chegdomyn.


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"The only difference between myself and a
madman is that I am not mad." (&::Dalí)

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