People for Profit: North Korean Forced Labour on a Global Scale Edited by Remco E
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PEOPLE FOR PROFIT People for Profit North Korean Forced Labour on a Global Scale Edited by Remco E. Breuker & Imke B.L.H. van Gardingen Contributors Jan Blinka Britt C.H. Blom Marte C.H. Boonen Klara Boonstra Rosa Brandse Remco E. Breuker Imke B.L.H. van Gardingen Larissa van den Herik Tycho A. van der Hoog Marieke P. Meurs Cedric Ryngaert Shannon R. Stewart Anoma P. van der Veere This is an open source publication by LeidenAsiaCentre. Copyright © 2018 (authors). People for Profit: North Korean Forced Labour on a Global Scale Edited by Remco E. Breuker and Imke B.L.H. van Gardingen ISBN 978-90-826167-1-2 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-826167-3-6 (e-book) LeidenAsiaCentre is an independent research centre affiliated with Leiden University and made possible by a grant from the Vaes Elias Fund. The centre focuses on academic research with direct application to society. All research projects are conducted in close cooperation with a wide variety of partners from Dutch society. More information can be found on our website: www.leidenasiacentre.nl For contact or orders: [email protected] M. de Vrieshof 3, 2311 BZ Leiden, The Netherlands Book design: A.P. van der Veere Contents Contributors IX Acknowledgements XII Introduction Remco E. Breuker and Imke B.L.H. van Gardingen 1 Chapter I Setting the Background: Labour Conditions in the DPRK Remco E. Breuker 6 Chapter II Accountability for DPRK Workers in the Value Chain: The Case of Partner Shipyard, a Polish Shipbuilder and its Dutch Partners Imke B.L.H. van Gardingen 12 Chapter III Surveillance and Long Hours: North Korean Workers in Russia Britt C.H. Blom and Rosa Brandse 43 Chapter IV Uncovering North Korean Forced Labour in Africa: Towards a Research Framework Tycho A. van der Hoog 67 Chapter V Employing North Korean Workers in the Czech Republic Jan Blinka 84 Introduction to Chapters VI-VIII The Networks that Shape Overseas DPRK Labour Remco E. Breuker 118 Chapter VI DPRK Overseas Financial Networks Shannon R. Stewart 120 Chapter VII Polish Companies and Their Structures Marieke P. Meurs 126 Chapter VIII North Korean Networks and Their Secrets: The Case of Taiwan Marte C.H. Boonen 133 Chapter IX ‘Slaves to the System’ and Awareness of North Korean Forced Labour Anoma P. van der Veere and Marte C.H. Boonen 146 Chapter X Non-Enforcement: The Conscious Choice Not to Enforce Remco E. Breuker 158 Chapter XI Compliance and Enforcement Imke B.L.H. van Gardingen and Remco E. Breuker 176 Epilogue I The Potential Benefits of the ILO Supervisory Machinery Klara Boonstra 190 Epilogue II Domestic Criminal Accountability for Dutch Corporations Profiting from North Korean Forced Labour Cedric Ryngaert 199 Epilogue III Testing the Protective Reach of UN Sanctions for North Korean Migrant Workers Larissa van den Herik 208 Index 216 Contributors Editors Remco Breuker (P.I.) is Professor of Korean Studies at Leiden University. He is also direc- tor of the LeidenAsiaCentre belonging to the same university. A medieval historian of Northeast Asia by training, he now also works on contemporary DPRK, particularly on human rights and exile narratives. The research which resulted in this publication has been funded by the European Research Council under the Starting Grant Scheme (War of Words - Proposal 338229). Imke B.L.H. van Gardingen LLM (Employment Law), MA (Korean Studies), is policy advisor on labour migration for the Dutch Federation of Labour Unions (FNV), spe- cialising in international and EU employment law. She coordinates the DPRK Overseas Labour research project. Contributors, in alphabetical order (by last name) Jan Blinka is pursuing his Ph.D. in International Relations at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. In his research, Jan focuses on regional conflicts, especially those in East Asia. As an Associate Fellow, he is affiliated with the Institute of International Affairs, based in Prague. Britt C.H. Blom is a research intern at LeidenAsiaCentre. Her research focuses on national policymaking in the East Asian region, specifically Japan and the Korean peninsula. She is currently the president of Leiden University’s association for students in Japanese and Korean studies. Marte C.H. Boonen has obtained a research MA with honours (cum laude) in Asian Studies from Leiden University, and is currently a researcher and project coordinator at the LeidenAsiaCentre. She focuses on Japanese and North Korean politics, security, and human rights. Klara Boonstra is Professor of International Labour Law at the Vrije Universiteit Amster- dam and has worked as Legal Counsel at the FNV (Confederation of Trade Unions of the Netherlands). Her expertise lies with international labour law, the impact of human rights on labour law, freedom of association and collective bargaining, equality law, and working time regulation Rosa Brandse holds an MA China Studies from the Yenching Academy program at Peking University and is currently a graduate student in the Korean Studies at Leiden Univer- sity. Her research interests include North Korean human rights, demonstrated by her previous work at the Seoul-based NPO ‘Transitional Justice Working Group’. Larissa van den Herik is Vice Dean of Leiden Law School and professor of public inter- national law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University. Her areas of research and expertise include international peace and security law with a focus on UN sanctions, terrorism, and international criminal law. Tycho A. van der Hoog holds a research MA in African Studies and a MA in history (cum laude). He conducted extensive fieldwork in Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zim- babwe. He is currently affiliated to the African Studies Centre Leiden. Marieke P. Meurs is a research intern at LeidenAsiaCentre who joined the Slaves to the System project at a later stage. She is an undergraduate student in her final year of the Korean studies major. Cedric Ryngaert is Professor of Public International Law, Utrecht University, and pro- gramme leader of the master public international law. The research which resulted in this publication has been funded by the European Research Council under the Starting Grant Scheme (Proposal 336230—UNIJURIS) and the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research under the VIDI Scheme (No 016.135.322). Shannon R. Stewart Ph.D. (Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, Yale Universi- ty) is a data scientist and strategist. Her work focuses on using large datasets to identify risks to human rights, health, and safety in corporate supply chains. Anoma P. van der Veere MA (Research) is a postgraduate researcher at LeidenAsiaCentre and a recipient of the MEXT scholarship for doctoral studies (Ph.D.) at Osaka University. He focuses on international public policy, governance, education, and human rights in Japan and North Korea. Acknowledgements his volume owes everything to a number of people who were willing to speak out, Tdespite the potentially serious negative consequences for them: North Korean exiles who worked overseas for their state; prominent North Korean exiles such as Jang Jin-Sung (Chang Chinsŏng, 장진성) and T’ae Yongho (태용호), who, time and again, were will- ing to explain how things work in the North Korean system. Dr Kim Kwang-cheol’s (Kim Kwangch’ŏl, 김광철) interviews with a number of former North Korean workers were invaluable. Experts in different fields never hesitated to generously donate their time, and efforts to assist us. Investigative journalists who have made this topic their home for the last few years unexpectedly shared some of their source materials with us, which furthered our progress. There are many more people to thank. Those journalists who kept encouraging us, politicians who tried (and try) to make a difference, fellow academics who took an interest and who took the trouble to write a kind message whenever the media, foreign governments, or colleagues in the field were less kind. We owe a word of thanks, too, to those who were critical; academic debate is a precious thing. Other kinds of criticism – the non-academic kind, if you will – only served to imprint the urgency of this research on us. Thank you all. But, above all, we must thank the members of our project team, who made astounding efforts to do the research and get this volume ready. You always kept smiling, so let us paraphrase Winston Churchill: ‘Research is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.’ The biggest thank you goes to you. Remco E. Breuker and Imke B.L.H. van Gardingen PEOPLE FOR PROFIT: NORTH KOREAN FORCED LABOUR ON A GLOBAL SCALE Introduction Remco E. Breuker and Imke B.L.H. van Gardingen We started our previous report by noting that a North Korean welder had burned to death while working on an assignment on a Polish shipyard in 2014. Chŏn Kyŏngsu’s (전경수) gruesome death galvanised awareness of what precisely had been happening to DPRK labourers all over the world. It seems fitting to introduce our follow-up report by telling a bit more about Chŏn, the details and stories that have emerged during the research of the past year and a half. Chŏn, a native of Pyongyang’s Man’gyŏngdae neighbourhood, was 41 when he died. He left behind a wife and a nine-year-old son. A man of few words, generally liked by his peers, he did not drink or smoke, but he was fond of the North Korean card game chup’ae. He had worked in Poland for less than two years when he died. Originally, he was assigned to do work that paid badly, but he pleaded with management to be transferred to somewhere he could either earn more or be sent home.