Mick Hartley

From the Daily NK:

North Korea is moving to send more workers to China following Kim Jong Un’s recent visit to Beijing, with authorities implementing stricter screening processes and intensified surveillance measures as the regime seeks foreign currency and China pursues cheap, skilled labor.

According to multiple Daily NK sources in North Korea recently, North Korean authorities are preparing to send additional workers to China, primarily to work in seafood processing plants and sewing factories. Internal preparations are already at their height, with the Cabinet and other government agencies handling practical duties for each sector.

The selection of the latest batch of workers is much stricter than in the past. Officials are taking a closer look at applicants’ overseas work experience, skills, health and loyalty. Background checks have also widened from five of the applicants’ relatives and coworkers to eight.

“Nowadays, they don’t just look at the person going overseas — they put responsibility on the agencies that recommended them and even their families, too,” one source said. “In the past, if problems arose, you’d suffer a year or two of economic and political disadvantages, but now, people say this could be lengthened to three to five years.”

Like before, workers must undergo ideological training, sign confidentiality agreements and swear loyalty to the regime before departure. However, the ideological training is now more intense, with lecturers issuing sterner warnings that overseas infractions would be met with stern punishment.

It’s not as if life as a North Korean worker in China was ever anything less than slave labour, with intense surveillance, long hours, living in dormitories with no freedom to go out, and – the final insult – most of your wages going straight to the NK government. But the ratchet only goes one way. It only gets worse.

Meanwhile, the Chinese seafood industry and China’s provincial governments have said they would welcome more North Korean workers. An employee of a seafood processing plant in Liaoning province said about 800 North Korean laborers work in the province, “but they could triple that number within a year or two if North Korea ensures the supply.”

Chinese entities prefer North Korean workers for obvious reasons. North Korean workers receive low wages, are highly skilled and follow the rules. Even Chinese local governments believe they are an ideal workforce for lowering personnel and management costs.

Well hey, it’s socialism in action: “socialism with Chinese characteristics”.