In a report based on 183 interviews with victims and witnesses of forced labour who managed to escape DPRK and now live abroad, OHCHR cited one person’s testimony that if a daily work quota was not met, workers would be beaten and have their food ration cut.

“These people are forced to work in intolerable conditions – often in dangerous sectors without pay, freedom of choice, the ability to leave, protection, medical care, time off, food, and shelter,” said OHCHR spokesperson Liz Throssell.

“They are placed under constant surveillance, regularly beaten, while women are exposed to continuing risks of sexual violence.”

The UN report into DPRK – more commonly known as North Korea - identifies six types of forced labour including work in detention, State-assigned jobs, military conscription and so-called “Shock Brigades”, where groups are forced to carry out “arduous manual labour”, often in construction and agriculture.

The most serious concerns arise in detention facilities, where victims are systematically compelled to work under threats of physical violence and in inhumane conditions.

The report suggests that the widespread use of forced labour in DPRK prisons may constitute enslavement - a crime against humanity.

North Koreans are “controlled and exploited through an extensive and multi-layered system of forced labour” directed toward the State's interests rather than the people's, the report authors concluded.

Press-ganged

Military conscripts are required to serve for 10 years or more and routinely forced to work in agriculture or construction, according to the OHCHR report’s authors.

A former nurse at a military hospital who treated soldiers during her compulsory service described their work as “hard and dangerous, without adequate health and safety measures”. She noted that many soldiers, weakened and tired, became malnourished and contracted tuberculosis.

Those enlisted into the “Shock Brigades” are often required to live on-site for months or years with little or no remuneration. Women, often the main income earners for families, are particularly impacted by these mobilisations, the UN human rights report noted.

Sent abroad

It alleged that the DPRK sends selected citizens abroad to work and earn foreign currency for the State, taking up to 90 per cent of their earnings.

Once they are set to work, these North Koreans live “under constant surveillance and with their passports confiscated…in cramped quarters, with almost no time off and extremely limited possibilities to contact their families”.

The institutionalized labour system begins at school, the report noted, with children forced to perform tasks such as clearing riversides or planting trees. “From an early age, you have to make yourself available to serve,” one of the witnesses said.

The UN report calls on the Government of DPRK to “abolish the use of forced labour and end any forms of slavery”.

It urges the international community to investigate and prosecute those suspected of committing international crimes.

It also calls on the UN Security Council to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC).