May 28, 2002 4 min read

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (AP) – Perched on wooden scaffolding, gripping a trowel in each hand, Kim Kym See takes a brief break from plastering a bathroom to explain why he has come from North Korea to work in Russia. “I’m here to build friendship between Russia and North Korea,” he says.

Actually, the relationship is based more on money than friendship. It’s built on a profitable, three-way arrangement: cheap labor for Russian construction firms, wages for desperately poor North Korean workers, and a trickle of revenues for the North Korean state.

The North Koreans building apartments in Russia’s Pacific port of Vladivostok make the equivalent of $120-$130 a month, says Kim Yen Chon, a construction foreman. Like most of his charges, Kim wears paint-stained overalls and cheap, plastic-soled fabric slippers, but he smokes expensive imported cigarettes.

“Koreans buy vodka, cigarettes and presents for home,” says Tsoi Yen Il, a Korean translator at the construction site. The gifts are usually household appliances, TV sets, VCRs and audio players.

According to the Russian Migration Ministry, just over 2,000 North Korean workers entered the Russian Far East around Vladivostok last year, up from 1,500 the previous year.

The increase was due to the brisker construction business, fueled by Russia’s economic revival. It coincided with warming ties between the two countries after a cool spell following the 1991 Soviet collapse. In the summer of 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited North Korea, and last year North Korean leader Kim Jong Il made a return visit.

North Koreans are laboring in the timber and construction industries just a few dozen miles from their homeland.

In 1999, the Migration Ministry barred North Koreans from agricultural jobs because many of those hired as farm workers had gotten involved in drug-trafficking, said Taisiya Rozhanskaya, a ministry official.

Many of the current workers do illegal, untaxed work on the side, with their superiors’ encouragement. Larisa Zabrovskaya, a scholar on Asian peoples, says moonlighting workers have to give their North Korean bosses some $100 a month and the money eventually finds its way to government coffers in Pyongyang.

“This money is centralized somewhere, perhaps in the consulate,” she says.

She notes that none of the workers has tried to defect to North Korea’s archrival, South Korea. “First of all, the ones who come here are ideologically reliable and they have been able to prove they will not escape,” Zabrovskaya says. “Second, they have families and there is an incentive – to make more money and be better off at home.”

North Koreans charge about $1.15 to plaster a square yard of a wall or ceiling, half of what Russians would get, says Valery Pestov, president of the Speko and Co. construction firm. They also agree to be paid only after a building is completed and apartments are sold, providing a Russian company with more working capital during construction, he says.

Finally, Pestov adds approvingly, Koreans are undemanding when it comes to creature comforts.

Speko houses them in a barracks crammed with bunk beds near the construction site. Makeshift wooden shelves overhead hold the workers’ few personal belongings, a pair of TV sets and a VCR. The only decorations are portraits of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, and his late father and predecessor as president, Kim Il Sung.

The workers voice just one complaint about life in Vladivostok: high crime. “More than once Russian men have attacked, beaten and robbed us,” says Tsoi, the translator.

The workers have chained a snarling dog near their barracks, and they travel around Vladivostok in threes – though Russian officials say that’s as much to watch each other as for protection. Russian employers sometimes withhold payment, complaining that the Koreans’ work is shoddy.

There’s one more thing that irks the Russians about their Korean workers. “They want congratulations sent to Kim Jong Il on the occasion of every holiday, be it the New Year or the Day of the Creation of the Korean Labor Party,” says Pestov, the construction company president.

“I tell them, ‘I couldn’t care less, but if you need it, bring the text and I’ll sign it.”‘