The South Korean SBS News site has reported that as many as 100,000 North Koreans are working in China and Russia, with the latter employing up to 25,000 of them assembling Iranian-designed drones at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Russia’s Tatarstan as well as Russian arms manufacturing, steel processing facilities, and shipbuilding plants.
The claim is based on a report published by the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) on Wednesday, Sept. 16 (MSMT), excerpts of which are also cited by Bloomberg.
The Russian Foreign Ministry is said to have issued over 36,400 visas to North Koreans in 2025 – nearly four times the number issued the previous year. According to the report, 98% of visas issued by Russia to North Korea were for “students,” in an attempt to circumvent international sanctions.
The movements of these workers and any interaction with outsiders is strictly controlled. Those who break the rules or attempt to flee risk reprisals being inflicted on their relatives remaining in North Korea (DPRK).
The average salary offered by Russia is around $7,500 per year, which is assessed as around five times that paid in China, most, if not all, is confiscated by Kim Jong Un’s regime, leaving the workers in debt to the state.
Russia gets a new pool of workers for industries supporting its war in Ukraine, while Kim’s regime gains access to foreign currency that helps finance its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, further eroding a sanctions framework Moscow itself once helped enforce.
North Korea and Russia open their first road bridge, connecting the border cities of Rason and Khasan, on September 7. Photo: KCNA / Reuters
North Korean workers in Russia were disguised as students under a visa scheme to evade sanctions, the report said. A North Korean worker there earns an average of US$7,500 in wages a year, most of which is confiscated by the Kim regime. In some cases, the forfeited amount exceeded their actual earnings, the report said.
Monthly wages earned by North Koreans working in Russia may be up to five times higher than what they can earn in China, making Russia an increasingly lucrative destination for Pyongyang.
At the end of 2025, an estimated 20,000 to 70,000 North Korean labourers were working in China, while another 15,000 to 30,000 were in Russia, the report said.
The provision of this labour support is yet another example of the cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang that included arms supply and troop deployments in return for financial and technical support for North Korea’s ballistic missile programs – which some estimates put as high as $800 million last year.
While much of this makes its way back to the DPRK through its opaque banking system, the MSMT details instances of cash being physically transported in diplomatic vehicles and pouches, as well as by overseas business travelers.
Sources: Kyiv Post; South China Morning Post