Workers from the DPRK can participate in the restoration of Donbass

Builders from the DPRK can be involved in the restoration of the republics of Donbass, Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Marat Khusnullin said on August 19 during a working trip to Tatarstan.

“Now the builders from the DPRK have approached with a proposal. If there are no legal problems, then I believe that [их участие в восстановлении ДНР и ЛНР] Maybe. If they are ready to come, we will be ready to receive them,” Khusnullin said (quoted from TASS). The vice premier also noted the high productivity of North Korean workers.

On August 18, the Russian Foreign Ministry already declaredthat they see no obstacles to attracting North Korean labor to the Donbass. Moscow is “not a Cerberus” to prevent the contacts of the DPR and LPR, which are not members of the UN, with Pyongyang, said Petr Ilyichev, director of the department of international organizations at the Foreign Ministry.

“The recruitment of labor from North Korea is subject to international restrictions established by UN Security Council resolutions. It is necessary, however, to take into account that they apply to the member states of the world organization, which the People’s Republics of Donbass are not at present, ”said the representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

According to the UN sanctions against the DPRK introduced in December 2017, all states recognized by the organization were ordered to send North Korean labor migrants home by the end of 2019. Thus, the UN further limited Pyongyang’s ability to receive foreign exchange earnings from abroad. According to the US, in 2017, the leadership of the DPRK annually received up to $500 million.

At that time, about 200,000 migrants from the DPRK were working abroad, of which about 40,000 were in Russia, says Alexander Vorontsov, head of the department of Korea and Mongolia at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

North Korea has become the third UN member state after Russia and Syria to officially recognize the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. It happened on July 13th. The DPR and LPR also recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia (not members of the UN).

The appearance of workers from the DPRK in the Donbass is quite real, Vorontsov believes. The fact that the DPR and LPR are formally independent, recognized by Russia, but not members of the UN, allows them to have relations with Pyongyang. At the same time, the qualifications and potential of North Korean workers are high, Vorontsov notes. According to him, this has been proven by the long-term practice of their activities in Russia, China, the Middle East and even in European countries before the imposition of sanctions in 2017.

North Korea itself, according to the expert, is a highly industrialized country, and the workers there are competent and disciplined, at the same time relatively cheap and undemanding to living and working conditions. Abroad, they live compactly and obey the elders appointed in North Korea, explains Vorontsov. The expert notes that, unlike labor migrants from Central Asian countries, workers from the DPRK are not influenced by Islam.

It is noteworthy that with the DPRK on the issue of assistance in the restoration of Donbass, it will not be Russia, which is implementing sanctions against Pyongyang on the use of North Korean labor abroad, but the DPR and LPR, says Ivan Timofeev, an expert at the Russian International Affairs Council. This will partly mitigate the legal problems for Moscow. But the Russian Federation is overwhelmingly a donor to the Donbass republics, so sanctions from the West on this issue are still possible, Timofeev says: “This will probably also be a reason for additional US unilateral sanctions against the DPRK.”

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