Residents “controlled and exploited”, “without food and shelter”: UN denounces appalling forced labor in North Korea

L’ONU appelle la Corée du Nord à “mettre fin au travail forcé sous toutes ses formes” Unsplash

L’ONU a dénoncé ce mardi 16 juillet un système de travail forcé profondément institutionnalisé en Corée du Nord, qui dans certains cas pourrait relever de l’esclavage, un crime contre l’humanité.

In a damning report, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights details how the inhabitants of North Korea are &amp ;quot;controlled and exploited by a vast, multi-layered forced labor system.

"The testimonies contained in this report provide a shocking and distressing insight into the suffering inflicted by forced labor, both in terms of its scale and the level of violence and inhuman treatment", said High Commissioner Volker Türk in a statement.

"These people are forced to work in intolerable conditions, often in dangerous sectors, without pay, without having a choice, without the possibility of leaving, without protection, without medical care, without leave, without food and without shelter& quot;, he denounced.

A large number of them are regularly beaten and women are "constantly exposed to the risk of sexual violence", he insisted.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights relied on various sources to prepare this report, including 183 interviews conducted between 2015 and 2023 with victims and witnesses who managed to flee North Korea and live abroad.

"Shock brigades"

"If we did not meet the daily quota, we were beaten and our food ration was reduced", says thus one of the victims.

These accusations are not new. A landmark report by a team of UN investigators a decade ago had already documented forced labour among other widespread rights abuses in North Korea, including executions, rape, torture, deliberate starvation and the detention of 120,000 people in a network of prison camps.

Tuesday's report focused on an institutionalised system with six different types of forced labour, including in detention and during the minimum 10-year military conscription.

There is also state-assigned compulsory labour and the use of “Shock Brigades” revolutionaries, or to groups of citizens organized by the state and forced to carry out a "hard manual labor", often in construction and agriculture, reports this new document.

There are also other forms of forced mobilization such as the sending of workers abroad, a source of foreign currency always under strict control.

"Slavery"

The system "acts as a means allowing the State to control, monitor and indoctrinate the population&quot ;, underlines the UN. "In certain cases, the level of control, the type of treatment and the level of exploitation of people subjected to work forced can be similar to 'property'," details the report, which could "constitute a crime against humanity".

The most serious concerns concern places of detention, where victims of forced labor must systematically work under the threat of physical violence and in inhumane conditions, underlines the UN.

After completing their studies or military service, each North Korean is assigned to a workplace by the state, which dictates where they must live. A system which meets all the criteria "of institutionalized forced labor in the country". The UN’ calls on North Korea to "end forced labor in all its forms", to " put an end to slavery and slavery practices" and "abolish the use of child labor".

It also calls on the international community to "guarantee strict due diligence in any economic engagement" with South Korea North and ensure that any work carried out by North Koreans abroad "is voluntary in nature, adequately compensated for workers and carried out under decent working conditions& ;quot;. He also called on the UN Security Council to involve the International Criminal Court.