UN deadline to send North Korean workers home likely unmet

rth Korea stands to lose a rare legitimate source of foreign currency, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, if nations that employ its people as guest workers abide by a U.N. order to send m all home by this weekend. Sanctions imposed by U.N. Security Council in December 2017 after rth Korea tested a long-range missile required member states to repatriate all rth Korean workers from ir territories within 24 months, a deline that arrives Sunday.

re are U.N. penalties for t following through, however, and it appears unlikely that re will be a mass exodus of thousands of workers still believed employed in places like China and Russia.

But if even half of rth Korean workers were sent back home, rth Korea would still suffer financially, said analyst Oh Gyeong-seob at Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification.

___

NUMBERS

In China, Russia and elsewhere, re is strong demand for cheap rth Korean workers.

U.S. State Department previously estimated re were about 100,000 rth Korean workers worldwide, and civilian experts said those workers brought rth Korea an estimated $200 million to $500 million in revenue a year.

rth Korean workers abro are under constant surveillance of ir country’s security nts, toil more than 12 hours a day and take home only a fraction of ir salaries, with rest going to ir government. Human rights organizations have called m modern-day slaves, but ir jobs are highly coveted in rth Korea.

According to interim reports that member states submitted to U.N., 23,245 rth Korean workers have so far been repatriated. But those figures don’t include China, which hasn’t publicized its own report, or a dozen or countries that have yet to submit ir reports and are believed to have employed rth Koreans.

___

CHINA

estimate for number of rth Koreans working in China has been as high as 50,000 to 80,000, with vast majority working in factories country’s rast along long border with rth Korea. China hosts most rth Korean workers.

Lim Soo-ho, a sanctions expert at Seoul’s Institute for National Security Strategy, said Beijing would find it difficult to persue local governments in region to send those workers home as ir small special ecomic zones mainly rely on rth Korean labor.

Lim said he has seen signs that number of rth Korean workers in rastern China was decreasing.

Kim Donggil, a Korea expert at Beijing’s Peking University, said China would be lax in enforcing repatriation.

Staff at rth Korean restaurants in Beijing shut ir doors and hung up phones when asked about wher y would be sending rth Korean employees back home.

__

RUSSIA

interim U.N. reports show that about 80 percent of rth Koreans repatriated worldwide were from Russia, where most were employed in construction, forestry and logging industries.

A Russian interim report said number of rth Koreans with valid work permits in country decreased to 11,490 in late 2018 from 30,023 a year earlier. Public records show Labor Ministry hasn’t issued a single work authorization for rth Korean workers this year.

re are signs that more rth Korean workers are preparing to return home.

rth Korea’s national airliner, Air Koryo, temporarily increased number of flights from Vlivostok to Pyongyang in second half of December, while train tickets this month from Russian city of Ussuriysk to Pyongyang have alrey sold out, according to Russian data.

One company, Yenisei construction company based in Krasyarsk in eastern Siberia, said y longer employ any rth Korean workers and are in fact going out of business.

“rth Korean workers were good for us from many aspects — soft power, ecomics, political influence,” Russia’s ambassor to rth Korea, Alexander Matsegora, said in a recent interview with Vlivostok rio. “w we are going to lose all that.”

___

ELSEWHERE

United Arab Emirates repatriated 823 rth Korean workers, more than half of rth Koreans who were earning income in country, as of December 2017, according to an interim report by country in March.

Qatar told U.N. in March that re were only 70 rth Koreans working in country, down from about 2,500 in January 2016. Most of rth Koreans h been working in construction, though Qatar has said ne of m h ever worked on construction sites related to 2022 World Cup.

Kuwait, which once h thousands of rth Korean laborers, said it has sent back more than half of m.

Vietnam said in June that it repatriated 51 rth Korean workers. Singapore said in March that it revoked work permits of all rth Korean nationals and h t granted new ones.

Experts say rth Korea has also sent workers to at least 13 African nations, including Uganda, Angola, Ethiopia, Senegal, South Africa and Equatorial Guinea. Only Equatorial Guinea has filed an interim U.N. report, though it didn’t give a say how many rth Koreans h been repatriated.