North Korean workers enter Russia on student visas to supply its war machine, with bosses told they 'won't run away'
The New Yalu River Bridge crossing between North Korea and China, as the US Treasury sanctions North Koreans and Russians accused of funnelling fraudulent IT workers' wages back to Pyongyang to fund weapons programmes.
North Korea is channelling workers into factories near Moscow — facilities that supply military rations and equipment directly to Ukraine's front lines — through a broker network backed by Russia and Pyongyang, a human rights investigation by the Hague-based Global Rights Compliance group has found. Student visas are used to circumvent UN sanctions, with brokers earning up to 150,000 rubles per worker placed and North Korea claiming the bulk of their wages under threat of retribution.
Undercover GRC investigators who posed as prospective employers were assured workers 'won't run away' — a pitch calculated to appeal to factory managers.
The labour operation runs in parallel with Pyongyang's military commitment: from 2024, North Korea has also deployed more than 10,000 troops to fight alongside Russian forces in Ukraine.
Separately, the US Treasury sanctioned 10 individuals and the Russia-based First Financial and Technical Development Center on 28 October for running a parallel scheme using North Korean IT workers to defraud American businesses and fund Pyongyang's weapons programmes.
