NEW YORK: Russia is increasingly mobilising North Korean workers to build military drones for use against Ukraine in defiance of international sanctions, giving Pyongyang a key source of revenue to fund its unlawful weapons programmes, the US and its allies said in a report.
Up to 25,000 North Koreans are believed to be working in Russia’s drone industry, including at facilities in Alabuga, Tatarstan, where unmanned aerial vehicles are assembled, the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team said in a report released Wednesday.
The report said North Korean workers abroad are estimated to have earned up to US$800 million for the Kim Jong Un regime last year, providing funds for its unlawful nuclear and ballistic missile programmes in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.
The development underscores how the deepening military ties between Russia and North Korea are expanding beyond weapons and troops into labour and industrial production. 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 Korean workers in Russia are 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 exceeds 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.
"DPRK authorities exercise extreme control over laborers’ movement and interactions with outsiders in order to prevent defections, while laborers who do defect risk reprisals against family members remaining in North Korea,” it said. DPRK is the abbreviation for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The US and its allies, including South Korea and Japan, are part of an 11-nation team that monitors the enforcement of sanctions on North Korea. The group was launched after a Russian veto in 2024 ended the mandate of a United Nations panel that had reported on North Korea’s sanctions evasion and development of its nuclear arsenal for 15 years. - Bloomberg
