North Korea has sharply ramped up the number of new workers it is sending to China this summer, with roughly 10,000 laborers crossing the border in a single month as ties between Pyongyang and Beijing continue to recover, according to a Daily NK source, and more than 50,000 workers are already under contract to follow them.
A Daily NK source told the outlet on Monday that around 10,000 newly dispatched workers crossed from North Korea into China in the roughly month-long period since mid-June. The workers travel by bus from Sinuiju, North Pyongan province, across the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge into Dandong, Liaoning province, with a daily average of 500 to 600 people entering the country and as many as 10 buses, each carrying 50 passengers, crossing together in a single convoy.
“On days when North Korean workers come through, some 10 buses cross the bridge almost all at once, each one carrying 50 people,” the source said. “Hundreds of people enter in a short span of time, so the line of buses passes by in an instant.”
One change from past practice, according to the source, is that Chinese local governments are now directly involved in managing personnel and paperwork for these worker groups. In previous years, dispatch relied mainly on contracts negotiated directly between North Korean trading companies and Chinese firms, but now those companies must report worker numbers and entry plans to the relevant local government in advance and receive approval before anyone crosses.
“No matter how many people are entering, they have to file in advance with the local government and get entry approval,” the source said. “Even for a small group, it isn’t enough for a company and a North Korean trading firm to work things out between themselves. It has to go through the relevant government’s approval process.”
That shift suggests the current wave of entries is proceeding under the active management, and at least tacit approval, of Chinese local governments rather than at the sole initiative of private firms or trading companies, though Beijing’s central government does not appear to be directly involved in the day-to-day administrative process. Central authorities are likely aware of the large-scale movement of North Korean workers but appear content to leave the matter to local officials rather than intervene directly, the source said.
Most of the workers are entering China under “industrial trainee” status, a designation ostensibly meant for people learning technical skills or production processes, even though they are in practice placed directly into factory jobs. That arrangement has drawn scrutiny as a workaround for U.N. Security Council sanctions that bar the employment of new North Korean workers abroad.
The Security Council’s Resolution 2397, adopted in December 2017, required member states to repatriate North Korean nationals earning income within their jurisdiction, along with the North Korean officials overseeing them, within 24 months, meaning workers were in principle required to return home by December 2019. Repatriations effectively stalled after North Korea sealed its borders in 2020 amid the spread of COVID-19, leaving North Korean workers stationed in China, Russia and elsewhere. Earlier Security Council resolutions separately banned new employment and work-permit approvals for North Korean laborers specifically to cut off the country’s foreign currency income, which means workers entering as “industrial trainees” but ultimately placed into productive labor and earning wages remain difficult to distinguish from a straightforward sanctions violation.
China wary of attention falling on dispatches
China also appears wary of the large-scale entries becoming public knowledge. Workers cross the border almost entirely during the predawn hours, when traffic and foot traffic are lightest.
“Most North Korean workers enter China around 5 a.m.,” the source said, a detail that points to a deliberate effort to limit outside exposure and international scrutiny of the movements.
The scale of dispatch is expected to keep growing. About 20,000 more workers are due to enter China by early September, the source said, and contracts have already been signed covering more than 50,000 North Korean workers in total.
Oh Gyeong-seob, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), told Daily NK that the surge reflects overlapping interests on both sides of the border. North Korea is struggling to secure foreign currency under U.N. sanctions, he said, while China’s three northeastern provinces are facing a deepening labor shortage in manufacturing as population outflow and urbanization continue, creating an opening for both governments to benefit from expanded worker dispatch.
Oh added that Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to Pyongyang last month produced pledges of cooperation across multiple sectors, with economic cooperation as the two sides’ biggest shared interest, and said the scale of North Korean worker dispatch to China is likely to keep expanding in the months ahead.
Reporting from inside North Korea
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July 30, 2026 at 01:24AM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)