Search Results for: qatar

November 10, 2014

Qatar, the sponsor of ISIS, is using N. Korean slave labor to build a World Cup village

One North Korean worker helping to build the high-rise said: “People like us don’t usually get paid. The money does not come to the person directly. It’s nothing to do with me, it’s the [North Korean recruitment] company’s business.” A project manager of the lavish development said the workers “don’t have a single rial themselves” and “borrow money from us if they need small things like cigarettes”. “The descriptions of the conditions North Korean workers endure in Qatar – abuse...

Categories Human Trafficking
September 18, 2017

The State Department’s efforts to isolate Pyongyang are starting to pay off

The reviews of Rex Tillerson are in, and most of them aren’t good. We could have predicted this ten months ago; after all, most of the commentariat harbors center-left or pro-“engagement” views and it wasn’t going to agree with Trump’s policies anyway. Still, it’s hard for me to accept at face value the criticisms of those who have defended, to varying degrees, the self-evidently disastrous North Korea policies of Barack Obama and second-term G.W. Bush — policies that have more...

Categories Diplomacy/Sanctions
April 11, 2017

South Korean censors fine lawmaker $4300 for telling the truth about Minbyun (updated)

South Korean National Assemblyman Ha Tae-Kyung invites a particular potency of venom from both the hard left and the hard right. The hard left hates him because he used to be pro-Pyongyang and they still are. Ha was imprisoned under the old right-wing dictatorship for his activism and for (by his own admission) his former pro-Pyongyang sympathies. He later turned against Pyongyang and became an activist for human rights for the North Korean people, for which he has received threats to...

Categories Censorship/Democracy/Useful Idiocy
March 30, 2017

The U.N. Human Rights Council needs reform (again)

Again, the idea of a U.S. withdrawal from the U.N. Human Rights Council is under consideration. Americans, especially American conservatives, tend to fixate on the Council’s fixation with Israel. For reasons I’ll make clear enough below, that fixation is not just silly, it’s cynical. Still, I think leaving the HRC just yet would be a big mistake. I might have answered that question differently ten years ago, before the U.N. Commission of Inquiry proved that the HRC is capable of doing...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
March 27, 2017

UN report shows China, others are still havens for North Korean money laundering

Due to a convergence of other commitments, it took me longer than I’d hoped to digest the U.N. Panel of Experts‘s latest findings about North Korea and financial sanctions. If you only read the bottom line and stop there, you’ll either be discouraged or find support for an argument that sanctions are futile. 210. Despite expanded financial sanctions adopted by the Security Council in resolutions 2270 (2016) and 2321 (2016), the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has continued to access...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
December 6, 2016

Treasury fires a broadside at Kim Jong-un’s slave labor racket

This blog has promoted the outstanding investigative work and legal analysis of the Leiden Asia Center in exposing North Korea’s rental of forced labor to European shipyards and construction companies, under unsafe and exploitative conditions. That work, ably led by Remco Breuker, yielded this Vice documentary and reports filled with actionable information.  Recently, Breuker wrote a long, sad, and funny opinion piece lamenting that LAC’s research has incurred much harassment from Pyongyang’s wacky bands of online sympathizers while having little apparent effect...

Categories Africa/Europe/Human Trafficking
August 12, 2016

North Koreans don’t want to be slaves overseas after all

The last refuge of those who defended North Korea’s use of overseas slave labor is that at least it was better than slave labor inside North Korea. It was always a con, of course – the North Korean regime promised its workers big money if they went overseas to toil in Siberian forests, Polish shipyards, Qatari construction sites, or Chinese garment factories. That the officials earned steep bribes with this con gave them a motive to lie and exaggerate. The...

Categories Human Trafficking
August 1, 2016

In the debate over N. Korea’s overseas workers, listen to the workers

As of January, two EU nations — Poland and Malta — were its principal consumers of North Korean labor. As the Leiden Asia Center has shown us, those North Korean workers labor under harsh and unsafe conditions, the North Korean government steals most of their wages, and the state’s per capita wage theft is far more profitable in Europe, where prevailing wages are higher, than it is in Africa or Asia where most North Korean laborers work. That’s why the...

Categories Human Trafficking
July 19, 2016

Andrei Lankov doesn’t really know if North Korea sanctions are working

It’s no secret that I’ve been a skeptic of “engagement” with Pyongyang from the very beginning, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Andrei Lankov. His Korea Times columns, his book, and his other writings on social, historical, and political matters have been so useful that I often cite them, despite his unrealized predictions or the silly things he occasionally writes. His view of engagement isn’t just the conventional approach of wheeling a catapult up the DMZ and flinging bundles of unmarked...

Categories Appeasement/Sanctions
July 11, 2016

U.S. joins diplomatic squeeze on North Korean labor exports

Last week, the Leiden Asia Centre made headlines around the world with the release of its exhaustive, 115-page report, “Slaves to the System,” on North Korea’s overseas labor arrangements and how those laborers are treated. The Leiden report coincides with new diplomatic efforts by the U.S., South Korea, and now, the International Labor Organization to bring those arrangements to an end. The Chosun Ilbo reports that the U.S. government “is preparing a series of reports on the abuse of North Koreans...

Categories Diplomacy/Human Trafficking/Sanctions
July 5, 2016

Minbyun’s frivolous lawfare terrorizes 12 young N. Korean refugees & endangers lives.

The western association of “left” with “liberal” does not hold up well in South Korea, whose political spectrum is dominated by warring factions of nationalists. These factions wield the law as an authoritarian sword against their rivals, and as a (sometimes flimsy) shield against their rivals’ authoritarian assaults. Historically, the worst authoritarianism was on the political right before the transition to democracy in 1987. The left still fuels its moral propulsion from the nostalgia of dissent dating back to this...

Categories Defectors/Human Trafficking/Korean Politics/Refugees/Useful Idiocy
June 9, 2016

A strike by North Korean workers in Kuwait portends a dark fate for them, and for Kim Jong-un.

I first learned that North Korea had exported laborers to Kuwait when I heard that those workers were providing thirsty locals with a valuable public service by brewing black-market moonshine for them. Then, in April, a report emerged that seemed almost too remarkable to be true — 100 North Korean workers in Kuwait had mutinied against their minders to protest the extra work and unpaid wages coincident to the “70-day battle” leading up to North Korea’s party congress in May. (In...

Categories Human Trafficking/Resistance
April 26, 2016

Report: 100 North Korean workers in Kuwait protest unpaid wages

Because North Korea is so uniquely opaque and repressive, it’s often difficult to gauge the level of dissent against, or popular support for, its regime. That repression follows North Koreans when they’re sent abroad to earn money for the regime, usually through the implied threat to punish the workers’ loved ones back in North Korea if they step out of line.  The recent and unprecedented mass defection of 13 restaurant workers from Ningpo, China, is an example of this. In...

Categories Resistance
March 4, 2016

Europe can play an important role in enforcing U.N. sanctions against N. Korea

With the enactment of UNSCR 2270, the EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini says the EU will soon move forward with what EU regulators refer to as “restrictive measures” against North Korea. “There is scope for the European Union to adopt additional autonomous restrictive measures to complement and reinforce the new U.N. measures,” said a diplomatic note seen by Reuters on the latest discussions. Germany, France, Spain and Poland want to see what more the bloc can do in areas...

Categories Europe/Sanctions
October 8, 2015

U.N. report demands that N. Korean leaders be held accountable through prosecution, sanctions

U.N. Special Rapporteur Marzuki Darusman has issued another report on human rights in North Korea (or more accurately, the lack thereof). The bad news is that the situation hasn’t improved, and North Korea and China are still stonewalling: Regrettably, the situation remains the same, despite the grave concerns reiterated by the international community in different forums. The Special Rapporteur also reflects on issues around accountability for those human rights violations, which should be addressed at an early stage, and on current efforts by the international community...

Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Anju Links/Human Rights/Sanctions
October 1, 2015

@GloriaSteinem @ChristineAhn & @WomenCrossDMZ: When will you call on Kim Jong-Un end the rape & murder of women prisoners?

The European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea’s new report on forced labor is rightfully attracting media attention for calling out 18 countries — Algeria, Angola, China, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Malta, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Nigeria, Oman, Poland, Qatar, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates — for using North Korean slave labor. (In fairness, they might have included South Korea on the list, too.) What reporters should not overlook, however, is the section of the report on slave...

Categories Human Trafficking/The Camps/Useful Idiocy
May 14, 2015

N. Korea’s expatriate labor needs ethical and financial limits

N. Korea increasingly relies on expat labor for hard currency A series of new reports suggests that the export of labor has become a major source of income for Pyongyang. The Financial Times cites an NGO estimate that the regime earns $1.5 to $2.3 billion a year from contract labor, in line with educated estimates of its annual revenue from missile sales ($1.5 billion) or arms deals with Iran ($1.5 billion to $2 billion). (Update: Marcus Noland questions that estimate,...

Categories Engagement/Human Rights/Kaesong/Russian Far East/Sanctions
May 5, 2015

Contradiction isn’t argument: A response to Doug Bandow on N. Korea and terrorism

In the years after my return from four years with the Army in Korea, I found much to agree with in Doug Bandow’s writing — up to a point. Bandow is best known — at least in the context of Korea — for arguing that South Korea can and should pay for its own defense, and that U.S. Forces Korea should withdraw. A supporter of the isolationist and semi-retired cult figure, Ron Paul, Bandow favors the withdrawal of all 28,500 U.S. military personnel from South Korea. But...

Categories Terrorism (NK)