North Korean construction workers in Russia are fleeing after learning that they have been sent to work in Russian-controlled portions of Ukraine.

High need for construction workers in Ukraine's war-torn Donbas area has resulted in a rise in demand, with North Korean immigrants accounting for a sizable portion of the workforce.

North Korean Workers Flee Jobs in Russia

Fearing for their life as a result of the Ukraine-Russia war, thousands of North Korean employees have fled their employment and gone into hiding.

According to an unidentified source, several workers fled after learning that they would be relocated to a new construction site in Ukraine and would have to settle everything by the end of September. Not only are construction workers fleeing, but so are management executives.

Workers were also said to be shaken by the idea of being deployed to Donbas and instead chose to live in concealment. North Korea has been sending manual laborers overseas for years, frequently retaining the majority of the employee's wages for itself, supplying the isolated regime with foreign money.

Despite having most of their earnings taken away, workers make more money than they would back home in North Korea, albeit it appears to be barely enough to survive, Daily Mail reported. 

Workers end up in other difficult industries outside construction, such as manufacturing, textiles, and mining. Even though UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea were imposed in 2020, Russia is still thought to be one of the largest hosts of North Korean manual workers.

According to a 2019 UN assessment, over 30,000 North Korean laborers lived in Russia in 2017, with the bulk working in the port city of Vladivostok, near the North Korean-Russia border.

In the previous decade, China has also housed up to 50,000 North Korean construction workers, though this figure is thought to be substantially lower now. Meanwhile, North Koreans aren't the only ones wanting to remove themselves from the conflict, with Russians choosing to abandon their homeland to avoid getting enlisted.

According to Radio Free Asia, the issue of employees fleeing is not new. Even in periods of relative calm, many North Koreans stationed in Russia go missing.

The number of escapees grew when the North Korean embassy notified them that they would be moved to Ukraine. Russia's Ambassador to North Korea, Alexander Matsegora, mentioned the possibility of deploying North Korean laborers to Ukraine in an interview with the Russian newspaper Izvestia in July.

December 2018 announcement from the Russian Foreign Ministry, there were 21,000 North Korean laborers in Russia as of September 2018. Around 19,000 of them worked in industries, farms, and construction sites. Tens of thousands of North Korean laborers in Russia were returned by the end of 2019 following the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2397 in December 2017.

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Russia Praises North Korea's Support for Kremlin's Military Operation

Although sanctions prevent North Korea from sending employees abroad and nations from giving work visas to North Koreans, Pyongyang has been known to send workers to China and Russia on short-term student or visiting visas to circumvent sanctions.

Moscow values Pyongyang's assistance for its special military operation in Ukraine and the accession of four regions to Russia, said Georgy Zinoviev, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's First Asian Department, on Tuesday.

"We strongly appreciate the North Korean government's unwavering backing for the Russian special military operation in Ukraine," the envoy said at an event commemorating the 74th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Moscow and Pyongyang.

Zinoviev emphasized that Pyongyang welcomed Russia's acceptance of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, as well as the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions. He also emphasized that collaboration between Moscow and Pyongyang will allow them to overcome the impacts of the pandemic, which is still weighing on bilateral relations, as per TASS.

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