China Used North Korean Forced Labor on Fishing Vessels, Report Says
China used forced labor from North Korean nationals on its tuna fishing vessels, advocacy group Environmental Justice Foundation said in a report published Feb. 23. EJF found evidence that North Koreans worked on 12 Chinese vessels and were subject to "physical abuse, verbal abuse and excessive overtime."
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The foundation interviewed Indonesian and Filipino crew members who worked on the vessels between March 2019 and June 2024 and found that the work by the North Koreans "appears to have bypassed legal frameworks designed to prevent goods produced by North Koreans entering global supply chains." The report indicates that the catch from the vessels potentially entered EU, U.K. and Asian markets, in violation of international law. It also said China's use of North Korean crew "likely" violated U.N. sanctions.
The North Koreans were reported to have been forced to remain on the vessels for up to a decade. Captains of the vessels allegedly hid the North Korean crew members and would not allow them off the ships at port calls.
In a press release, the EJF said that "the experiences of the North Korean crew, and particularly the number of years they allegedly spent at sea, constitute forced labour of a magnitude that surpasses much of that witnessed in a global fishing industry already replete with abuse." Steve Trent, the CEO and founder of EJF, said “the use of North Korean labour on board Chinese fishing vessels is a damning indictment of the failure to regulate our oceans."
The conditions EJF observed fall under the International Labor Organization’s 11 indicators of forced labor. Should CBP issue a forced labor finding, it can bar imports from the offending suppliers, as it did in December with an aluminum supplier in the Dominican Republic (see 2412030017).