North Korean workers are once again filling factory floors in China, as large numbers of new arrivals replace those who returned home over the past two to three years. But despite booming orders and longer hours, their pay, meals and daily routines remain largely unchanged, and surveillance over them has intensified.
Daily NK recently examined conditions at a garment factory in Liaoning province where roughly 300 North Korean workers are employed.
According to a source inside North Korea, about a third of the factory’s North Korean workers had returned home by early this year, leaving its dormitories and workshop quiet. But with new workers now arriving, the factory floor has grown busy again, and a flood of orders from major Chinese clothing companies means night shifts are now common.
As of early August, the North Korean workers at the factory were putting in roughly 13-hour days. Their typical schedule ran as follows:
- 6 a.m. to 7 a.m.: breakfast (one hour)
- 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.: morning shift (four and a half hours)
- 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.: lunch (one hour)
- 12:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.: afternoon shift (four and a half hours)
- 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.: dinner (one hour)
- 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.: night shift (four hours)
On days without a night shift, work ends at 5 p.m. But when orders pile up, as they have recently, night shifts run every day from Monday through Saturday, meaning the workers spend nearly the entire day at the factory apart from meal breaks.
Higher pay on paper, but take-home pay stays flat
The contracted monthly wage for newly dispatched workers is 3,200 to 3,500 Chinese yuan (about $476 to $520), more than 25% higher than in the past, according to sources. Yet what workers actually take home remains just 600 to 700 yuan (about $89 to $104) a month. More than 50% of their wages is deducted for party funds, with another 200 to 300 yuan (about $30 to $45) withheld for dues to the Socialist Women’s Union of Korea or the General Federation of Trade Unions of Korea, the state-run women’s and workers’ organizations that nearly all North Koreans must join, and 500 to 700 yuan (about $74 to $104) taken as a management fee by the trading company that dispatched them.
On top of that, newly dispatched workers are contracted under a “no overtime pay” clause, meaning they receive nothing extra for working night shifts. The busier the factory gets, the worse the arrangement becomes for the workers under it.
Meals have also changed little. Food quality varies by factory and by the trading company a worker is attached to, but meals typically consist of rice and soup with three side dishes, such as kimchi, pickled vegetables and stir-fried vegetables. On nights with a shift, however, workers are reportedly given a meat dish, such as duck or pork.
“A meat dish comes out every time there’s a night shift,” one source said. “If meat appeared four times in a week, that means there were night shifts on four of those days.” The only reward for a grueling 13-hour workday, in other words, is a meat side dish at dinner.
Meanwhile, the number of state security agents monitoring the workers has reportedly more than tripled. These agents, now called jeongbowon, belong to North Korea’s Ministry of State Security, the regime’s political police force responsible for monitoring citizens for signs of disloyalty. In the past, a single agent typically oversaw 300 North Korean workers at a given site; now the ratio is closer to one agent per 100 workers, according to the source. The Liaoning factory currently has three such agents stationed on site.
The agents track workers’ every move for signs of ideological deviation and work to keep them from being exposed to outside culture and information, including South Korean dramas and pop music, known as Hallyu. This kind of systematic control extends even to workers’ rare trips outside the factory: when they go out in groups of around 10, roughly once a month, agents reportedly accompany them to watch closely for any exposure to outside culture or unauthorized behavior.
As North Korea again expands the dispatch of new workers, the exploitation and the ideological and lifestyle controls they face appear only to be intensifying.
Reporting from inside North Korea
Daily NK operates networks of sources inside North Korea who document events in real-time and transmit information through secure channels. Unlike reporting based on state media, satellite imagery, or defector accounts from years past, our journalism comes directly from people currently living under the regime. We verify reports through multiple independent sources and cross-reference details before publication.
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September 1, 2026 at 10:40PM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)