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Working overtime

North Korean migrants labor in Czech factories after visas expired

By Markéta Hulpachová
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
March 19th, 2008 issue

ČTK

The SAM Trade factory in Skuteč, east Bohemia, was one of the first to hire North Korean seamstresses, and was the first to let them go. enlarge

Schoolbags, satchels and leather seat covers. Each day, hundreds of these items pass through the agile hands of the seamstresses at Sněžka Náchod, a leather and textile producer in east Bohemia. Needleworkers are allegedly a dying breed in the Czech Republic, so company director Miloslav Čermák employs migrant workers from remote countries such as Moldova, Mongolia and Vietnam. However, one nationality is conspicuously absent from this spectrum.

Two years ago, Čermák said he was pressured into firing 90 of his finest workers because they hailed from a country whose practices are considered an international security threat. Supplied by the North Korean government, these seamstresses came under international spotlight in 2006, when it was discovered that a majority of their paychecks funded the communist regime in their homeland.

The Czech Republic, in an effort to implement measures against unmonitored funding of the North Korean government, resolved the situation by recommending that the Foreigners’ Police stop issuing work visas to North Koreans.

According to information publicized by the Interior Ministry in February, the last batch of such visas issued to North Koreans expired March 1.

Yet as statistics published March 12 by the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry indicate, these provisions have had little effect on the 144 North Koreans who continue to linger in the local work force.

While neither Interior nor Labor and Social Affairs ministry officials would comment on the situation by press time, Marie Jelínková, an immigration expert at the Multicultural Center Prague, offered a possible explanation.

Although foreign nationals whose residency in the Czech Republic is based on employment cannot legally live here once their work permit expires, there are several ways to get around this legislation.

“They may have changed the purpose of their stay, which corresponds with another type of visa, or they may have obtained a visa based on a trade certificate,” Jelínková said.

Another possibility, she added, was that the North Koreans were granted exemptions by officials at individual branches of the Labor Office, which is ultimately responsible for issuing work permits. Since most Czechs and other EU nationals view needlework as an unattractive occupation, Labor Office employees may have viewed the North Koreans as a valuable labor source, disregarding international security concerns.

“How the Foreigners’ Police responded when renewing the visas is another question. In any case, I don’t think it’s likely that [North Koreans] are working here illegally,” Jelínková said. “They know the [Czech] government is monitoring them, and they definitely don’t want any negative attention.”

Factory life

There was a time, Jelínková recalled, when as many as 383 North Koreans worked in local textile plants and other light industry establishments. When local media first publicized a 2006 story about “modern-day slaves” from North Korea toiling in local factories, Jelínková began to investigate, but soon realized that contacting the workers was no easy feat. “The women spend most of their time locked up,” she wrote. “They go outside with their guard, and, if they go without him, they watch each other the whole time.”

Eventually, Jelínková succeeded in uncovering some of the details of the seamstresses’ daily lives. The women, who were typically between 18 and 22 years old, were housed in dormitories and constantly overseen by an envoy of the North Korean government who, as the only translator at the workers’ disposal, handled practically all their communication with the outside world.

According to Čermák, the women often worked long hours, sewing for 10 to 12 hours a day, even on the weekends.

Ironically, sending the women to work under such conditions is not considered a punishment, but a reward. “They usually come from families deemed sufficiently loyal to the regime in North Korea, a country where a bowl of white rice is a luxury,” Jelínková wrote in the report.

Praised as model workers by their employers, the seamstresses were reputably twice as productive as their colleagues. “They were in heaven,” Čermák said. “When they first saw a supermarket here, their jaws dropped to the floor.” Many of them made as much as 20,000 Kč per month, he added.

Money trail

Most of the North Korean workers formerly employed in companies like Sněžka Náchod were supplied by the local company M Plus, which had a contract with the North Korean Light Industry Ministry. But, in 2006, a series of political events ended the symbiosis.

In March that year, Kim Tae San, a North Korean diplomat who defected to South Korea in 2002, testified on North Korean migrant labor to European Parliament. As a former overseer of 200 seamstresses at a local shoe factory that was formerly co-owned by the North Korean government, Kim told the parliament that most of the wages earned by these workers were deposited directly into a collective bank account controlled by the North Korean government.

Čermák said he was asked to deposit the seamstress’ paychecks in a North Korean Embassy account, but refused to comply. “However, we had no way of controlling what the workers did with their paychecks,” he said.

Seven months after Kim’s testimony, the North Korean government announced it was testing nuclear weapons.

In reaction, the United Nations Security Council issued a string of new sanctions against the regime, urging member states to freeze all funds owned or controlled by parties supporting the North Korean nuclear development program, prompting the Czech government to launch an investigation of local businesses employing North Korean workers.

“In most cases, the Interior Ministry found that the conditions for their employment were completely legal,” Jelínková said.

Subsequently, the factory owners came under pressure by their U.S. business partners, who refused to make investments that indirectly supported the North Korean regime. “[U.S. automotive] companies like Johnson Controls and General Motors stopped doing business with us once they found out our products were touched by North Korean hands,” said Petr Martinec of SAM Trade, a leather and textile producer in east Bohemia. “The company almost went belly-up. … The whole affair cost us 11 million Kč.”

As one of the first companies to hire the North Korean workers supplied by M Plus, SAM Trade was also the first to let them go. But, according to Martinec, not all companies reacted this way. “I don’t want to stir up the hornets’ nest, but I can tell you that North Koreans are still here, happily working away at other factories,” he said. “We were just one of the few companies stupid enough to do things by the books.”

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com

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