S2 E8: The untold plight of North Korean workers (China Pt. 3)

·30 min·2 clips

Seventeen North Korean women working in Chinese seafood plants said they had been sexually assaulted; two died by suicide in 2022.

1. The Outlaw Ocean Season 2 Episode 8 investigates the use of illegal North Korean forced labour inside Chinese seafood processing plants near the city of Dandong. 2. Host Ian Urbina reports the episode; the investigation used open source intelligence, undercover Chinese investigators, and testimony gathered through South Korean and Chinese proxies from roughly two dozen North Korean women who worked in the factories. 3. The episode's thesis is that China has been openly and systematically violating 2017 UN sanctions banning North Korean labour transfers, and that the resulting forced-labour seafood supply chain reaches directly into American supermarkets, fast-food chains, and military dining facilities. 4. The Outlaw Ocean team identified the Donggang Jin Wei Foodstuff company through a Douyin party video in which North Korean songs were played, North Korean flags were displayed across five screens, and dozens of workers waved miniature North Korean flags — despite a Chinese commenter noting this was probably illegal to film. 5. Dandong is a city of two million on China's northeastern coast at the North Korean border, connected to North Korea by the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge, through which approximately 70% of China-North Korea trade flows. 6. The U.S. State Department estimates over 100,000 North Korean workers are currently in China; the Chinese government itself put the number in Dandong alone at 80,000 as recently as 2022. 7. Before the 2017 UN sanctions, North Korea sent approximately 40,000 workers to China annually; a Seoul think tank estimated the program earned $2.3 billion per year for the North Korean government through seized wages. 8. The program is administered in part by an agency called Room 39, which also manages money laundering, cyber attacks, and funding for North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. 9. Workers who take part are vetted — anyone with a family member who has attempted to defect is automatically disqualified — and their passports are confiscated upon arrival in China. 10. Promised monthly salaries of around $270 are reduced by loyalty fund payments to the North Korean government, plus deductions for food, housing, electricity, and heating; workers typically receive less than $30 per month. 11. During the COVID-19 lockdown, plants closed but the North Korean government continued demanding loyalty payments; managers forced female workers to leave plants with no wages, and loan sharks used to bribe officials targeted workers' families at home. 12. Testimony from roughly two dozen North Korean women gathered through proxies described 14-to-16-hour shifts, factories smelling of rotting fish, locked dormitories housing up to 30 people per room, and no unsupervised time outside factory grounds. 13. Violence was persistent: men in the plants slapped, groped, and harassed female workers; female workers were summoned to managers' drinking sessions where threats of sexual violence were routine. 14. Seventeen of the women interviewed said they had been sexually assaulted; one described feeling she 'wanted to die'; two North Korean women at one factory died by suicide in 2022. 15. The investigators used multiple methods to gain access: leveraging local officials for surprise walkthroughs and using a charity program allowing Korean-descent Chinese to deliver items like tampons to North Korean workers in exchange for factory tours. 16. After investigators visited several plants, Chinese security officials distributed pamphlets stating that residents contacting North Korean workers or working with foreign media would be charged with espionage. 17. The seafood from the plants documented as using North Korean labour was traced to Walmart, Giant, ShopRite, McDonald's, and Sysco, which services U.S. congressional cafeterias, military bases, and public schools; most companies declined to comment. 18. Urbina explains that plausible deniability is structurally embedded in the global supply chain — Western companies entering China are effectively told not to ask about human rights, and the multiple handoffs between ship, processing plant, and retailer make individual accountability functionally impossible. 19. The episode combines investigative supply chain analysis with first-person testimony from women at high personal risk — speaking could result in execution for them and imprisonment for their families. 20. Listeners interested in global supply chain ethics, forced labour, North Korea, or seafood industry investigation will find the episode detailed and sourced; those who prefer audio that does not include accounts of sexual violence and suicide should be aware of the content.

As heard by us

A glossy factory celebration gives way to wages, surveillance, and coercion facing North Korean workers in China.

Jin Wei's 21-acre seafood compound in Dandong first reads like a carefully staged success story: a 2023 Douyin celebration with singers, musicians, dancers, fireworks, strobe lights, and drone shots of a campus lined with factories.

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You want to trace a Dandong seafood celebration to North Korean workers paid far less than promised.

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