(SeaPRwire) –    “Wake up before 6 a.m. to the Russian winter. Walk to the construction site as a group. Work from 7 a.m. until 10, 11 p.m., sometimes even midnight. Without breaks. There is no set end time. You finish when the target is met. Rain, snow, it does not matter. We worked with no gloves, no heating, no protective equipment. My hands cracked so badly I could not grip the tools. But you do not stop.”

This account comes from “RT”—identified only by his initials for safety—a former victim of North Korea’s overseas forced labor program, who shared his story with Digital.

He was among the estimated 100,000 laborers dispatched abroad through North Korea’s government-run work program.

“I was told I could earn money,” he claimed to Digital. “That was all. Nobody mentioned a quota. Nobody told me that most of what I earn would be taken. I thought if I went to Russia and worked hard, I could save enough to build a better life for my family. When I arrived, I realized none of that was true. The money was not mine. It was never going to be mine.”

An international human rights group, Global Rights Compliance, has released a new report featuring direct accounts from North Korean workers in Russia.

The investigation revealed that Russian firms are hiring North Korean laborers in breach of UN sanctions, frequently concealing their identities to the point that workers remain unaware of their actual employers. UN Security Council mandates oblige member nations to return North Korean workers home, suggesting their ongoing employment in Russia may constitute an international sanctions violation.

The results provide some of the most explicit evidence to date of how North Korea reportedly props up its regime despite sanctions—by exporting its people as labor, seizing their earnings, and exerting complete control beyond its territory.

Global Rights Compliance North Korea advisor Yeji Kim told Digital, “Every North Korean worker deployed abroad must pay a mandatory monthly sum to the state, known as the gukga gyehoekbun. As one worker told us, it must be paid ‘no matter what, dead or alive.’”

According to Kim, an average laborer makes about $800 monthly for as many as 420 hours of work. From this amount, $600 to $850 is withheld for the state quota, plus further deductions for travel costs and shared accommodation.

Only about $10 remains. Kim noted that if workers fail to meet the quota, the shortfall rolls over, trapping some in debt for a full year.

One laborer described the quota as a “lump on his back” that governed every facet of his overseas existence.

“Every month you must pay,” RT claimed. “There is no negotiation. If you fall short, the debt carries forward to the next month. We were told, ‘The quota must be met by any means necessary, even if it meant paying out of their own pocket.’ You came to earn and you leave with nothing. And if you fail too many times, they send you home. Home does not mean relief. It means blacklisting, interrogation, and sometimes your family paying the price.”

Digital contacted Russia’s Foreign Ministry and North Korea’s UN mission for comment but received no reply before publication.

The study detected all 11 International Labour Organization markers of forced labor across accounts from 21 workers in three Russian cities—individuals who were unacquainted. The indicators comprise debt bondage, movement restrictions, wage withholding, extreme overtime, physical abuse, monitoring, fraud, seclusion, exploitation of vulnerability, and harsh conditions.

According to the report, North Korean security personnel immediately seize and hold workers’ passports upon their arrival in Russia.

“My passport was taken the day I arrived,” RT said. “I never held it again. I could not leave the worksite freely. The city was right there, beyond the fence, but we were sealed off from it. A few times a year, we were allowed out, but only in groups, heads counted, with a fixed time to return.”

Multiple cases of physical assault were documented, including one where a laborer was so badly beaten he couldn’t work for a fortnight. Onsite monitoring was depicted as relentless, employing collective punishment to compel workers to spy on each other.

Laborers reported residing in cramped shipping containers swarming with cockroaches and bedbugs, receiving merely one or two showers yearly and, in some instances, only one day off per year.

One worker told investigators they were forced to “lead lives worse than cattle.”

When asked how central the program is to North Korea’s economy, Kim said: “The U.N. Panel of Experts estimates approximately $500 million annually from the labor program alone. For a country under the most comprehensive sanctions regime in U.N. history, that is a critical revenue stream. It sustains the political elite, funds internal patronage networks and underwrites military ambitions, including nuclear development.”

These revelations emerge as reports indicate North Korea has provided Russia with weapons and military personnel valued at up to $14 billion to bolster its war in Ukraine.

The report’s writers caution that nations hosting these workers are instrumental in perpetuating the system by permitting its operation on their soil.

Those featured in the report represent a small minority who successfully fled the system. RT expressed that he now feels compelled to raise awareness.

“We are just like you, but we labor like cattle,” he said. We have families. We departed our homeland seeking a better future for our children, only to encounter a system that stripped us of everything.”

He stated that thousands are still ensnared.

“I want people to know that right now, today, there are men on construction sites in Russia working 16 hours a day, sleeping in containers, earning nothing, with no way to call home and no way to leave. Their names are not in any report. Nobody knows they are there. But they are there. And if I could say one thing to them, it would be — the world is starting to listen. Please hold on.”