North Korean authorities are drawing up plans to minimize the economic damage the international community’s moves to block imports of Chinese seafood produced through the forced labor of North Korean workers, Daily NK has learned.
In late February, the New Yorker ran an expose documenting how North Korean workers were forced to work in terrible conditions in Chinese seafood processing plants based on a report by the Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit investigative journalism outfit.
In response to criticism that seafood produced by slave labor by North Korean workers in Chinese factories was exported to the United States, South Korea and Japan, the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China called for an end to imports of Chinese seafood produced by North Korean forced labor. The commission warned that U.S. consumers and the U.S. government were at risk of unintentionally supporting North Korean forced labor and financing North Korea’s weapons programs.
Afterward, Sysco and Trident Seafoods — the world’s largest food and seafood distributors, respectively — said they would suspend transactions with Chinese seafood processing plants suspected of using forced labor by North Korean workers. South Korean companies Coupang and Lotte Mart did likewise.
According to Daily NK sources in North Korea and China on Monday, the North Korean authorities — believing this is a grave matter that could have the negative impact of reducing a significant source of foreign currency income — have begun drawing up measures to minimize the economic harm in cooperation with their Chinese counterparts.
“There must be no drop in foreign currency income”
Speaking on condition of anonymity, one source in North Korea said the North Korean authorities are, as a broad principle, cooperating as much as they can with plans to respond to the economic crisis impacting Chinese seafood processing plants as a result of the U.S. and South Korean bans on Chinese seafood imports.
Another source in China said that problematic seafood processing plants in Dandong, Dalian and elsewhere in China “plan to bolster their quality control to meet or exceed international standards and, in so doing, restart exports by restoring their credibility.”