Moscow agency advertises team of 40 North Korean women for hire for $6 an hour

A Moscow staffing agency has advertised 40 North Korean women for hire in the city at 480 rubles ($6) an hour on Russian online marketplace Avito, specialist North Korea news site NK News reported Wednesday.

The agency had been posting jobs on Avito since 2023. 

The post highlights the women's cooking skills — in particular their ability to make gimbap (seaweed rice rolls) — for restaurant work, and also offers them for production and conveyor lines, textile factories and farms. It describes them as extremely hard-working.

One condition comes attached. All 40 have to be taken on as a single team, with no option of splitting them between projects.

They would work at least 26 to 28 shifts a month, 11 hours at a time, which would earn each worker $1,700 to $1,800 a month.

Peter Ward, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute, told NK News that "between 75-90 percent will be taken by intermediaries, officials and the central government." 

Ward also said the requirement that the team stays together was a sign of tighter oversight, with the women restricted to one employer and one workplace.

Russia has been drawing in North Korean labor to fill gaps in its own work force. NK News reported in July on large numbers of North Korean women at a dumpling factory near Moscow, and groups of North Korean women are employed at textile factories and farms in western Russia.

Russia issued nearly 36,000 education visas to North Korean workers last year as part of an arrangement that processes laborers as students. This gets around UN Security Council Resolution 2375, which bars North Korean workers from earning income abroad and prohibits member states from issuing them work permits.

BY KIM EUN-BIN [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]