American companies were put on notice this week by the Trump administration that they could face steep fines, or even criminal charges, if their business involves North Korean workers anywhere in their supply chain.
A State Department advisory, published online, also provided the most detailed and comprehensive public listing to date of more than 40 countries and about a dozen industries where North Koreans were employed in 2017 and 2018, in violation of United Nations sanctions. The workers are typically paid a fraction of their salaries, while the rest, as much as 70 percent, is taken by North Korea’s government.
“Dangers can be lurking in global supply chains,” said Anthony Talbott, who heads the University of Dayton’s Human Rights Center. “North Korea is the most brutal, anti-Christian regime in the world.
The only reason an American corporation would be contracting with companies using their laborers would be because their prices are significantly lower.”
North Korean workers abroad typically work 16- to 20-hour shifts with only a few days off each month, said the State Department, which describes the system as a type of human trafficking. Their pay supports North Korea’s programs of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, the advisory said.
“Businesses should be aware of North Korea’s deceptive practices in order to … ensure compliance with applicable legal requirements across their entire supply chains,” the State Department said in a statement Wednesday.
The advisory also names more than 230 North Korean companies that have joint ventures with partners from China and other countries. The companies produce a variety of items, including apparel, small electronics and minerals.
American manufacturers, which import about 10 percent of their supply chains, could face legal repercussions if they bought materials produced by those joint ventures.
The National Association of Manufacturers declined to comment.
Last year, an Associated Press investigation documented North Korean women in Chinese factories processing seafood that ends up in American supermarkets.
The North Korean laborers often covet the jobs, which range from construction in Algeria, Kuwait and Malaysia to positions in medical clinics in Cambodia, China and Nigeria. The North Korean government receives hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign currency from their labor, as much as a tenth of its economy, experts say.
“The crackdown on wages is the one of the final and deepest-dive measures to cut off all foreign cash and finances coming into the DPRK,” said George Lopez, who served on the United Nations panel of experts for monitoring sanctions on North Korea.
But he said the advisory was “more bark than bite” because it’s very hard to identify and impose the restrictions.
Enforcement in the U.S. falls to U.S. Customs and Border Protection when it comes to blocking imports produced by North Korean laborers.
