Russia has started to send workers from the DPRK in line with UN security Council sanctions
NEW YORK, 7 Feb — RIA Novosti. The authorities of some Russian regions began to send North Korean workers, as stipulated by UN security Council resolution, said the Russian Ambassador to Pyongyang Alexander Matsegora.
“The ban on workers from the DPRK will blow on the Russian economy, but we are UN security Council resolutions executed strictly. Many governors have already started to send (workers of the DPRK — ed.),” matsegora said during a conversation with a group of Russian journalists.
The Ambassador said that every year citizens of the DPRK issued 12-15 thousand Russian visas, 90% of which are short-term work visas. According to him, only Russia had a population of 35 thousand workers — mostly in construction, agriculture, in the fishing industry.
Matsegora also reported that workers from North Korea pay on average the same as the Russians, and one salary of such a worker “feed the 13 members of his family”. The Ambassador said that in the hands of these workers earn 40-50% of salary, and the rest goes to the DPRK.
In this regard, he called allegations that the North Korean citizens working in Russia in slave-like conditions “utter nonsense”.
Earlier, the UN Security Council unanimously imposed new sanctions against the DPRK, which will significantly limit the export and import capabilities of Pyongyang. Resolution 2375 set the most stringent UN sanctions regime in the twenty-first century. One of the paragraphs of the resolution limiting the issuance of work permits to citizens of the DPRK. In October 2017, the President of Russia Vladimir Putin signed a decree on measures to implement the resolution.