Noord Koreaanse dwangarbeid in de EU - Main contents

Vandaag stuurde Marietje Schaake een brief aan Hoge Vertegenwoordiger Federica Mogherini met een oproep de Noord Koreaanse dwangarbeid in Europese lidstaten aan te pakken. De brief werd door 20 andere Europarlementariers ondertekent.

Een kopie van onderstaande brief is ook gestuurd naar de Poolse premier Szydłoen de Commissaris voor Werkgelegenheid, Sociale Zaken en Arbeidsmobiliteit Marianne Thyssen.

Eerder stelde Marietje Schaake alschriftelijke vragen over de situatie van Noord Koreaanse dwangarbeiders in Europa.

Dear High Representative,

In July 2016, an investigation led by Leiden University’s Asia Centre noted thousands of North Koreans were forcefully sent to work in Europe and obligated to send 70 to 100 percent of their earnings to the North Korean state. Most notably, the concluding report found North Koreans in Poland earn the North Korean state more than fifteen million euros a year annually, which constitutes more than half of total EU-North Korea trade in 2015.

Current EU sanctions specifically target North Korea’s nuclear weapons and nuclear programmes as well as other weapon of mass destruction and ballistic missile programmes. Such targeted sanctions however insufficiently take into account the degree to which seemingly private North Korean companies are intertwined with the North Korean state apparatus. One company in particular, Rungrado can be considered as a defacto extension of the North Korean Worker’s Party.

While Rungrado provides ‘training’ and is the entity ultimately sending the workers abroad, it is the North Korean state that decides who is sent and which also maintains a heavy degree of surveillance and control over the expatriated workers. Rungrado is indirectly run by the North Korean Workers Party, yet as a producer of a wide variety of items including food, construction and mining materials, it does not feature on the EU’s sanctions list. As a result, Rungrado was able to conclude agreements with various Polish companies under which North Korean workers were sent to work in various Polish industries, the majority of which are shipyards.

Kim-Jong Un’s regime continues to develop nuclear weapons, conducts nuclear and ballistic missile tests, is a suspect in the WannaCry hacking attack and uses increasingly aggressive rhetoric against the west. It is unacceptable that the North Korean state, with the millions of euros it earns in Europe through forced labour, continues to fund its aggressive nuclear and military ambitions. At the same time, the circumstances under which North Korean individuals are sent abroad, continuously monitored and exploited constitute grave human rights violations.

We would therefore urge the EEAS, the European Commission and Polish authorities to work together and to conduct an investigation into these practices by the North Korean regime and its affiliated (European) companies. Additionally, Rungrado as well as any other North Korean companies found to be complicit in similar schemes should be added to the EU sanctions list at the earliest possible opportunity.

Sincerely,

Marietje Schaake (ALDE)

Tunne Kelam (EPP)

Matthijs van Miltenburg (ALDE)

Roger Helmer (EFDD)

Petras Austrevicius (ALDE)

Jordi Solé (Greens/EFA)

Karima Delli (Greens/EFA)

Jasenko Selimovic (ALDE)

Daniel Caspary (EPP)

Klaus Buchner (Greens/EFA)

Javier Nart (ALDE)

Emmanuel Maurel (S&D)

Hilde Vautmans (ALDE)

Sophie in t Veld (ALDE)

Ana Gomes (S&D)

Pascal Durand (Greens/EFA)

Eva Kaili (S&D)

Beatriz Becerra (ALDE)

Thomas Händel (GUE/NGL)

Julia Reda (Greens/EFA)

Bronis Ropė (Greens/EFA)