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According to a new report from the Netherlands-based rights group Global Rights Compliance, a Russian broker network is bringing North Korean workers into Russia on fake student visas and placing them in forced labor, including at factories that supply Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Getting into it: The report, released Thursday after a nine-month investigation, centers on Moscow businessman Vladimir Sokolov and his online platform KNDR.su, which advertises North Korean workers to Russian companies in farming, construction, manufacturing and tech. Investigators posing as potential employers were told the workers enter Russia on student visas and are enrolled in colleges they never attend, an arrangement that gets around both UN sanctions and Russian labor protections.
Sokolov’s network charges up to 150,000 rubles, about $1,860, per worker, and its listings say the workers put in 12 hours a day and get only two days off each month, with one ad assuring employers the workers wouldn’t “run away.” Investigators found officials from North Korea’s embassy visiting job sites before any workers were sent, and found North Korean workers at an aluminum plant with defense contracts and a food plant that packs field rations for Russian troops. North Korean overseas workers typically hand over up to 90% of their pay to the government in Pyongyang, which uses the money to fund its weapons programs.
A UN Security Council resolution passed in 2017 bans countries from hiring North Korean workers and required them all to be sent home by 2019, a measure Russia voted for. But Russia issued over 36,000 visas to North Koreans last year, nearly all of them for schooling, quadrupling the number from 2024, and an 11-country sanctions monitoring team estimates North Korean workers abroad brought in $450 million to $800 million for Pyongyang in 2025.
Sokolov didn’t respond to requests for comment, and the European Union sanctioned him earlier this month for promoting business deals with North Korea. His operations director, Ruslan Zhukov, said the North Koreans are college students doing practical training under an intergovernmental agreement. Zhukov called the allegations “false, fabricated, and categorically rejected in their entirety.”
This all comes as Russia and North Korea keep tightening their alliance under a 2024 mutual defense treaty, and North Korea has already sent more than 10,000 troops along with weapons and ammunition to help Russia fight in Ukraine.
