FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

VICE Specials

Cash for Kim: North Korean Forced Labourers Are Working to Their Death in Poland

VICE was able to speak with North Korean forced labourers in Poland and reveal the conscious and unwitting beneficiaries of their exploitative working conditions.

To turn on English subtitles, click "CC" and change the language to English.

Going off an accident report obtained by VICE, stating that a North Korean welder lost his life in the CRIST shipyard in the Polish seaport of Gdynia, VICE filmmakers Sebastian Weis and Manuel Freundt have uncovered which companies are using North Korean labourers in Poland.

Weis' and Freundt's investigation has revealed the conscious and unwitting beneficiaries of these exploitative working conditions. The filmmakers were able to speak with North Korean labourers who have been isolated and kept under watch, and who were probably too afraid of punishment to report their living and working conditions in Poland.

VICE has gained exclusive access to documents that reveal the wages of North Korean labourers in Poland before the Kim regime's deductions. VICE News has gained access to confidential documents such as service contracts, payment records, registers of persons, passport copies and excerpts from a population register smuggled out of North Korea, the latter indicating that a Polish company is likely being run by a high-ranking member of the North Korean military.

The research unravels a complex web of organised exploitation, bureaucratic chaos, official indifference and political ignorance that extends all the way to the European Commission. Most of all, the film shines a light on working conditions that can only be described as forced labour, as defined in the European Convention on Human Rights and by the International Labour Organisation.

The documentary poses the question of whether the presence of North Korean forced labourers in Poland is a bureaucratic system error, or rather the result of economic policy that turns a blind eye to the consequences of its actions, as long as European companies profit, while the Kim regime bypasses international sanctions to fill state coffers with foreign currency.