Secretary of State Rex Tillerson accused Russia and China of paying the North Korean government to provide slave labor, providing “illicit sources of revenue” to a pariah state developing long-range nuclear weapons.
“The North Korean regime receives hundreds of millions of dollars per year from the fruits of forced labor,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday during the presentation of the State Deparment’s annual report on human trafficking.
“Responsible nations simply cannot allow this to go on, and we continue to call on any nation that is hosting workers from North Korea in a forced labor arrangement to send those people home.”
Russia and China are responsible for between 50,000 and 80,000 North Korean citizens employed as forced laborers, “many of them working 20 hours a day,” according to Tillerson. And their wages are sent to the government, which undercuts international efforts to starve North Korea of the money required to fund the development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile system that could deliver a bomb to the United States.
“When state actors or nonstate actors use human trafficking, it can become a threat to our national security,” Tillerson emphasized.
President Trump’s national security team has urged China to cut financial support for North Korea, a regime long dependent on its powerful communist neighbor. China has resisted full implementation of international sanctions imposed on the North Korean economy. International observers noted China mitigated the effect of coal industry sanctions by expanded the amount of iron it imported from the rogue regime.
Though Tillerson criticized both Russia and China for their complicity in human trafficking, he singled China out for special rebuke on a blacklist of countries that support human trafficking.
“China was downgraded to Tier Three status in this year’s report in part because it has not taken serious steps to end its own complicity in trafficking – including forced laborers from North Korea that are located in China,” Tillerson said.
