As many as 12,000 North Korean workers at a Russian drone facility are being subjected to gross human rights abuses and human trafficking, a new report has found.
The findings were published jointly by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Dallas-based George W. Bush Institute, examining the Yelabuga drone plant in Russia’s Tatarstan region.
The report details how Russia, North Korea, China, and Iran are each playing a distinct role in expanding unmanned aerial vehicle production at the facility.
Russia receives more than 5,500 drones per month from the plant for use in its ongoing war against Ukraine, giving Moscow a significant battlefield advantage.
China serves as the primary supplier of dual-use components to the operation, including batteries, internal electronics, engines, and navigation systems.
Iran has supplied Russia with Shahed drones, enabling Moscow to develop upgraded domestic variants known as Geran, deepening the military-industrial cooperation between the two countries.
North Korea’s arrangement is particularly exploitative, with Pyongyang retaining as much as 90% of the wages earned by its own citizens working at the facility.
Song Young-Chae, a Seoul-based academic and human rights activist with the Worldwide Coalition to Stop Genocide in North Korea, says Pyongyang is “effectively conducting slavery of its own people and for its own profit.”
Song noted that the abuse extends well beyond the Yelabuga plant, telling DW, “We know there are construction workers in the occupied Ukrainian territories, North Koreans in lumber camps and, of course, tens of thousands of soldiers have been sent to fight — and die — on the front lines in Ukraine.”
“Life in North Korea is not easy, but these people are being sent to Russia as slaves, with no freedom, and they are only allowed to keep a fraction of the money they earn,” Song added.
Both Russia and North Korea are in open defiance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2397, adopted in December 2017, which requires member states to repatriate North Korean workers within two years.
The report describes the arrangement as meeting the legal definition of forced labor, stating that North Korea “is selling the labor of its citizens under a state-to-state arrangement, controlling whether they may leave and collecting most of their wages.”
Dan Pinkston, a professor of international relations at the Seoul campus of Troy University, warned that the geographic alignment of the four nations makes outside interference almost impossible, saying “any kind of international interdiction is impossible.”
Song pointed out that Russia and China, both permanent members of the UN Security Council, are actively ignoring the body’s resolutions, stating “there is very little that can be done.”
Pinkston raised broader concerns about the emergence of a powerful bloc “ripping up the post-World War II order on the rule of law and human rights,” with the weapons produced at Yelabuga serving those confrontational ambitions.
“UN Security Council resolutions on North Korean workers, on weapons proliferation, on the sale of dual-use technologies are all being ignored, so I think we can say that the UN’s sanctions regime is pretty much dead,” Pinkston said.
Pinkston also warned that North Korea has been closely observing the battlefield innovations of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and is actively developing its own drone capabilities, with “serious implications” for South Korea’s military readiness.
The joint report calls on the US State Department to work with allied nations to disrupt human trafficking networks and sanction those responsible for the abuses at Yelabuga.
It also urges the UN to multilaterally investigate the Yelabuga complex, catalogue documented abuses, ensure accountability for perpetrators, and extend protections to victims.
Foreign companies operating within the Yelabuga special economic zone, including several European firms and at least one US company, are urged to exit the site under the report’s recommendations.
