After being stranded in China two years during the coronavirus pandemic and running up heavy debts, two North Korean women took their own lives early this year, sources in China told RFA.
The pair of textile workers, toiling in China to earn cash for leader Kim Jong Un's government, had worked at two different clothing factories in the city of Donggang, close to the North Korean border, a Chinese citizen of Korean descent told RFA’s Korean Service March 5.
“They had money problems and were in hopeless situations,” said the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.
The source, who works as an interpreter at one of the factories, said she had heard the news from a mechanic who worked with the North Korean women.
“When these women were dispatched to China before the coronavirus pandemic, they paid bribes of about U.S. $1,500 to an official in a human resources company. Some of them even borrowed money from loan sharks to raise the money for the bribes. They have to pay the principal back after a year, with $70 to $100 per month in interest,” the source said.
Cash-strapped North Korea sends workers to China and Russia to earn foreign currency for the ruling party. The companies that employ them pay much higher salaries than what they could ever earn in North Korea, but their North Korean handlers collect the lion’s share, leaving them with only a fraction.
But that pittance is still larger than what they could hope to earn in their home country, which is why some North Koreans will take out loans to bribe officials to secure their spot in a Chinese factory.
The source said that workers typically sign contracts stating that they will earn 2,000 yuan, about $300 per month, but they are actually paid only 300 yuan, or about $50, per month.
The handling company promises to give the remainder of their salary when they return home. China and North Korea have closed their border since the start of the pandemic in January 2020.
The source said one of the women died in late January. She was 26 and worked at a sewing factory. She heard her parents back home were suffering due to her debt, the source said.
The hiring company told the authorities that the woman had died of a chronic disease, and they scattered her ashes in the Yalu River that runs between North Korea and China, the source said.
The second woman, 27, died last month at her apartment and worked at another clothing factory in Donggang, another Chinese citizen of Korean descent from Dandong, across the Yalu River from North Korea’s Sinuiju, told RFA.
“However, the North Korean manpower company which the woman belonged to reported to their home country that she had died due to her own accident. This false report made her fellow workers angry,” said the second source, who requested anonymity to speak freely.
“This worker got engaged to a man while she was still in North Korea and she applied for an overseas dispatch to raise money for her dowry, but, was unable to return home for over two years. She kept asking the manager several times to send her home,” said the second source.
Instead, the manager humiliated the worker in front of her peers, the source said.
“They criticized her longing for home as an ideological error, saying that earning foreign currency for the country is an act of patriotism. She was pessimistic about her situation and after she had spent all the money she had saved on hospital treatment for a back problem,” the second source said.
“Fellow workers are outraged by the attitude of the North Korean manpower company for distorting and covering up how their coworker died. … She was in so much pain that she chose to die on her own and could not return to her homeland even after death as her body was cremated and scattered in the Yalu River,” the second source said.
The source said that the ashes of North Korean workers are usually stored after cremation when they die. However, the remains of the workers who killed themselves were not stored, as part of the coverup.
There are an estimated 20,000 to 80,000 North Koreans working in China according to the U.S. State Department's 2021 Trafficking in Person's Report.
North Korean labor exports were supposed to have stopped when United Nations nuclear sanctions froze the issuance of work visas and mandated the repatriation of North Korean nationals working abroad by the end of 2019.
But Pyongyang sometimes dispatches workers to China and Russia on short-term student or visitor visas to get around sanctions.
Suicide prevention help in the United States is available from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 00-273-TALK (8255). For additional resources visit: SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.
For help in South Korea, call the Ministry of Health & Welfare Call Center at 129 or Lifeline Korea at 1588-9191.
Translated by Claire Lee and Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jieun Kim.
By Jieun Kim | Radio Free (2022-03-08T23:02:18+00:00) In debt and stranded in China, 2 North Korean textile workers take their own lives. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/08/in-debt-and-stranded-in-china-2-north-korean-textile-workers-take-their-own-lives/
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