The Debate | Opinion | East Asia

How China, Russia, and North Korea Enable Each Other’s Atrocities

China enables North Korean forced labor, which in turn fuels Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine.

Multiple geopolitical crises, from Iran to Ukraine, prove one truth: that dictators often stick together. China and Russia have been aiding Iran, with satellite intelligence, while Beijing has been described as the “decisive enabler” of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, and North Korea has been supplying Moscow’s army with troops.

What has been little understood until now, however, is that both China and Russia are directly facilitating North Korea’s crimes against humanity through what a new report calls “a state-directed system of forced labor deployment.”

The new report, published by the Seoul-based Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR), was launched in Brussels and London last month. Titled “Financing Oppression and Weapons Program: Russia-North Korea Joint Venture Through Military and Security Forces,” the report’s investigation reveals that North Korea is trafficking soldiers – disguised as students – to Russia as forced labor. These North Koreans are not only fighting in Putin’s war in Ukraine but also working on construction projects – benefiting Putin’s regime, and financing Kim Jong Un’s.

The report summed up this atrocity: “North Korean workers dispatched to Russia are exploited as instruments for generating foreign currency to sustain weapons production and regime survival. They are subjected to state trafficking and forced labor.”  

The practice long predates the Ukraine war. In 2017, the New York Times reported on slavery involving forced North Korean laborers in the home improvement and forestry industry in Russia.

The NKHR’s new report followed a previous report published in November 2024, titled “Made In China: How Global Supply Chain Fuels Slavery in North Korea’s Prison Camps.” That 2024 report detailed crimes against humanity in North Korea’s prisons, which are part of China’s supply chains – and thereby the world’s. In other words, products labeled “Made in China” may very well have been made in North Korean prison camps. 

Many of the victims are women. As the Made In China report stated: “Prisoners endure severe violence, including sexual assaults, forced nudity, rapes, forced abortions, beatings, and extrajudicial killings. Many are compelled to work up to 20 hours a day to meet export quotas for goods sent to China.” 

For many years, forced labor in China’s supply chains has been widely reported. Whether it is Uyghur slave labor of the kind reported six years ago, with Uyghurs loaded onto trains and moved around China, or forced labor documented by the United Nations this year, or prison labor reported by former foreign prisoners such as Peter Humphrey, forced labor in China’s supply chains is well-established.

But now it is clear that China is not only using its own prison population for slave labor. As the “Made In China” report put it, “Chinese authorities have also been well aware of Chinese companies outsourcing to North Korea in violation of international sanctions, and exporting raw materials for production of wigs, fake eyelashes, rattan bags, or........

© The Diplomat