North Korean authorities are requiring organizations seeking to deploy overseas workers to submit contracts bearing the actual seals of foreign business partners, then granting deployment authorization based on these documents.
Rather than approving organizations merely proposing business plans, authorities now grant deployment rights only to institutions that can prove through contracts they have already secured actual work. This shows that North Korean officials are directly scrutinizing contracts, foreign business partners, and work scopes before selectively determining which organizations get assignments.
Earlier Daily NK reporting revealed that North Korea is reassessing the profitability of existing overseas worker deployment contracts and planning to expand overseas labor exports tailored to conditions in Russia, China, and other countries. The findings show how this policy operates in practice on the ground.
According to high-level sources inside North Korea, organizations seeking overseas deployment approval must submit multiple work contracts to authorities. However, simply submitting many contracts does not guarantee approval. One source explained: “If you submit seven or eight contracts, at minimum one or two must bear the actual stamps of counterparts in China or elsewhere for approval to be granted.”
The term “approval” appears to refer to a certain qualification or authorization status that the state grants allowing an organization to mobilize and deploy overseas workers. In other words, one-sided plans or documents outlining future contract possibilities are insufficient—the contract must include confirmation from foreign business partners that they actually intend to participate in the work.
What North Korean authorities fundamentally want to verify is this: “Has the organization actually secured legitimate work that can absorb deployed labor?”
What the work actually produces matters
The source stated: “You can’t get approval just by saying you’ll employ a certain number of people. There must be specifics about what work will be performed, what methods and equipment will be used, and what results will be produced.”
Contracts must specify not only the number of workers employed but also concrete details: what tasks workers will perform on-site, what equipment or methods they will use, and what products or outputs the work will generate.
For example, a garment factory contract must detail what products will be manufactured and which production stages will be handled; a seafood processing operation must specify what raw materials will be processed, how, and what will be delivered. This approach reflects the state treating overseas workers not merely as labor units but as assets it can track—monitoring how labor is actually utilized in operations and what economic returns it generates.
Submitting contracts for overseas business is not a new procedure. Historically, deployment organizations have signed contracts with foreign firms and used these as grounds to request work permits or worker deployment. What stands out recently, however, is the meticulous vetting based on whether organizations have actually secured contracts—using these to evaluate whether an organization qualifies for future overseas worker deployment. Contracts are now functioning as qualification assessments for dispatch organizations, not merely supporting documentation.
The emerging structure appears to be: organizations that secure substantive contracts and demonstrate operational capability receive approval and personnel allocations, while those that cannot are denied assignments. If this structure solidifies, overseas deployment rights could shift from a permanent authorization held continuously once acquired to a qualification that the state redistributes based on actual performance metrics.
However, a 2025 Daily NK AND Center report on seafood processing factories in China found that 80 percent of North Korean workers surveyed had never signed contracts; even those who did were informed of conditions only verbally.
“In North Korea, we didn’t know about contracts. After arriving at the Chinese factory, we all put our thumbprints on contracts, but the contents were not explained in detail and we were not given copies. Contract terms were mostly communicated verbally.” (Testimony from a North Korean worker deployed overseas)
For North Korean authorities, contracts function as qualification review material and personnel allocation criteria. But for workers themselves, contracts do not serve as a basis for verifying wages and working conditions or for asserting rights.
Post-COVID trade management mirrors this control
This approach to overseas worker deployment management resembles the management methods North Korea has strengthened in the trade sector since COVID.
After reopening trade following border closures, North Korea retained a system of granting work permits only after confirming transaction partners, goods, import/export plans—rather than granting broad autonomy to individual trading companies as before. In authorizing trade, the state created a mechanism to verify “who is trading what with whom, and how much will be earned.”
Authorities have consistently scrutinized the legitimacy and capability of transaction partners, examining the cost and revenue structures of domestic trading companies to determine whether operations will generate tangible state benefit.
The recent approach to overseas worker deployment management parallels this. Where authorities once required trading companies to prove business plans with transaction partners, they now require labor-sending organizations to document actual employers, work, task descriptions, and outcomes through contracts. The scope of state control is expanding from goods and foreign currency to encompassing overseas labor exports themselves.
Crucially, this control does not aim to reduce overseas worker deployment. Rather, North Korea is expanding overseas labor while concentrating workers in organizations whose contracts and conditions have been verified—expanding deployment scale while the state scrutinizes more precisely which organizations, with which foreign companies, for which projects receive personnel.
Rather than loosening state control due to renewed foreign currency-earning necessity, North Korea is expanding operations around approved organizations and verified transactions—what might be termed “controlled expansion” in overseas worker deployment.
One source said: “Now it’s not the case that some company controls people and sends them abroad as it wishes. The state examines whether the counterpart is reliable, what work they perform, and what benefit accrues to the state before allocating labor from above.”
He added: “Ultimately, people are treated as state resources. Where there’s no profit, people aren’t sent. Where there’s clear benefit and state necessity, labor is concentrated.”
Ye-ji Kim, North Korea advisor at Global Rights Compliance), told Daily NK: “A structure where the state selectively allocates labor based on performance and profitability means workers are not treated as rights-holding subjects but as revenue assets under state management. Since workers are excluded from contract negotiations, even if contract rates rise, there is no mechanism for those gains to translate into wage or treatment improvements.”
Moving forward: Monitor not just “approved organizations” but contract implementation and results
These changes carry implications for how overseas North Korean worker conditions are tracked. Experts say it’s necessary to verify not only which North Korean organizations have received overseas deployment approval, which foreign firms they contracted with, and what work is specified in those contracts.
Experts also note the need to track how many workers are actually allocated based on those contracts, and what products they produce or work they perform on-site. Particularly important, they emphasize, is confirming whether contracted work matches actual field operations, and where produced goods or work results are directed.
Kim stressed: “The key is verifying who actually profits beyond North Korean authorities. You must trace the circuit—organization to contract partner to intermediaries and subcontractors to shell companies to fund-flow accounts—as one integrated network. Supply chain tracing and import restriction models established in response to Uyghur forced labor should be actively applied to the North Korean worker issue.”
September 4, 2026 at 07:38PM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)