Listen — The untold plight of North Korean workers (China Part 3) Episode 8

Episode highlights:

• North Korean labour is forced labour by definition – nobody has a choice. Officially, China is in line with its UN allies in sanctioning North Korea and its regime-funding labour. But, unofficially, since 2017, China has quietly but consistently violated those sanctions. This is an open secret China has successfully kept hidden from the West. Until now;
• Despite the prohibition against North Korean labour, the US state department estimates that there are more than 100,000 North Korean workers currently in China. We set out to humanise these numbers, compare them with Chinese data, and connect some dots. But first we reckon with the fact that local people helping us with this reporting are risking everything from espionage charges to execution. But even despite the extreme risks, two dozen workers agreed to talk to us, and be quoted by an interpreter. Their rare testimonies tell of rampant sexual assault, violence, constant monitoring and zero access to the outside world; and
• We manage to connect the dots from these testimonies to seafood being shipped to American importers that supply major retailers like Walmart, McDonald’s and Cisco – the largest food distributor on the planet. Host Ian Urbina reflects on the invisible dots of plausible deniability, which are built into the whole system. These are the dots that connect Indonesian slave labour on a ship, to Uyghur labour in a factory, to a grocery store down the block from your house.