Russia recruits North Korean forced labor via student visas — SkimNews
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- Global Rights Compliance conducted a months-long investigation revealing a Russian broker network uses fake student enrollments to bring North Korean workers into Russia for forced labor, circumventing UN sanctions.
- Vladimir Sokolov operates KNDR.su, a platform that markets North Korean laborers to Russian employers in agriculture, construction, and IT, charging 100,000–150,000 roubles per placement.
- Ruslan Zhukov, operations director for Sokolov’s network, told investigators posing as employers that North Korean workers are enrolled in colleges they do not attend to evade labor laws and work 12-hour days, six days a week.
- Russia granted over 36,000 North Korean visas in 2025—mostly for education—marking a fourfold increase from 2024, despite a 2017 UN resolution banning member states from hosting North Korean workers.
- North Korea earns an estimated $450 million to $800 million annually from overseas workers, with the report linking the revenue to funding its ballistic missile development.
- Global Rights Compliance stated that the labor network supports Russia’s war effort, with Sokolov promoting placements at two sites tied to Moscow’s military-industrial complex.
Why it matters: The scheme funnels hundreds of millions to North Korea’s weapons programs while exploiting workers, and directly undermines UN sanctions—enabling Russia to bolster its industrial and military capacity amid isolation. Governments must act on the forced labor nexus sustaining this alliance.
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