NARRATOR: North Koreans are working as labourers in the construction and timber industries throughout the Russian Far East. The conditions they are forced to work under on Russian soil are exactly the same as those within North Korea. This report reveals the human rights abuses that continue under this de facto dictatorship, in President Putins free and democratic Russia.
RUSSIAN: This is horrible. This is slavery on Russian soil. We are supposed to be a democracy.
NARRATOR: Vladivostok, capital of the Russian Far East. Until only a few years ago, Vladivostok was a closed city, serving as the headquarters of the Soviet Unions Pacific Fleet. In little over a decade, Vladivostok and its Far Eastern neighbour, Khabarovsk, have reestablished themselves as commercial centres, hubs of trade with Russias Asian neighbours, China, Japan and Korea. Its citizens now enjoy a high quality of life in its newly renovated avenues and thoroughfares, while large numbers of tourists visit the area on the fabled Trans Siberian Express, which has its eastern terminus here. Russias Communist past seems all but forgotten, its memory clung onto by a dwindling number of the party faithful. But an extraordinary anachronism from the Communist era remains in the very heart of the Russian Far East. North Korean labourers are still widely employed by the regions municipal governments, and in the local construction and timber industries. Under an agreement made by the old Soviet and North Korean governments, thousands of North Korean labourers live and work in the region under a regime strictly controlled by the regimes own authorities, an exact microcosm of North Korean society transplanted onto Russian Soil. As a consequence the same human rights abuses inflicted in North Korean continue to be perpetrated in Russia:
SERGEI KOVALYOV, Russias Former Human Rights Ombudsman: Well, the biggest one (human rights abuse) is forced labour. Theyre forced to work as loggers on these farms where they lived, ate, slept, and theyre not allowed to leave. Theyre like slaves.
NARRATOR: Sergei Kovalyov claims a secret protocol between the North Korean government and Russian government is still in force.
SERGEI KOVALYOV: The agreement states that the North Korean intelligence officers have the right to be in Northern Russia and to do what they need to and that Russian intelligence officers will help them.
NARRATOR: The Russian authorities insist this arrangement has now changed, claiming North Koreans work here under the same conditions as any other immigrant workers.
DR. ALEXANDER LEVINTAL, Minister for Economic Development and Foreign Relations, Khabarovsk Territory: I think around 1999 we held negotiations with the Koreans, who did not want to minimise the presence of their security forces, but we convinced them. After 1999, there was no Secret Service. All the Koreans that are here now are here under the new scheme.
NARRATOR: Levintal claims that North Koreans working in the region are now allowed the same rights as other immigrant workers.
DR. LEVINTAL: The rules for Koreans are now the same as for Chinese, Americans or whoever.
NARRATOR: We visited the North Korean headquarters in Khabarovsk to try to interview the regional chief about the arrangement now in force.
MAN AT NORTH KOREAN HQ: We got all the paperwork, all our documents are in order. Were doing everything by the book. If youre the Russian government, then we can talk. Otherwise go away. No, no, no. Please go away. Quickly.
NARRATOR: Nikolai worked for seven years for the Russian government as a Korean translator. During this time he gained an unparalleled insight into North Korean society, and the way their regime worked.
NIKOLAI: In 1985 I graduated from the Korean department of Vladivostok State University. From 1985 to 1992 I was almost always here working with Koreans. I had to translate during meetings, negotiations and any other translations needed. This was a launch pad for me to learn Korean. I achieved that and got to know North Koreans very well, not completely, but quite well.
NARRATOR: He also enjoyed a certain celebrity as one of the few Russians who spoke Korean.
NIKOLAI: I remember lots of things and I feel somewhat nostalgic. This was a good time in my life, I had fun.
NARRATOR: He was taken to North Korea on an official visit, and remembers the impact it had on him.
NIKOLAI: I feel really bad for North Koreans, they are not even allowed to use their own brain, everything is decided for them, their Party Secretaries decide everything for them. It is designed so the person would feel reduced to almost nothing. When you go to North Korea, even the monuments erected to the Korean Party leaders are enormous, so that one feels very small next to them. We travelled with Nikolai into the interior to visit Chegdomyn, the logging town where he used to work. On the train we met three North Koreans en route to the logging camps from North Korea. The Russian minder who accompanied them held on to their passports to ensure their safe delivery to the logging camp. He told us that labourers were beaten on the soles of their feet or hung up with their hands behind their backs for committing crimes. He said that a member of the Public Security Service or PSS based at the compound we visited would send anyone accused of defaming Kim Chong Il or the North Korean regime back to North Korea for punishment. There he said they faced imprisonment, torture or even execution,. Chegdomyn is a traditional Russian frontier town, situated on a tributary of the Amur, the Far Easts major river. The towns economy is based on coal mining and forestry, and decades of commercial exploitation of the areas natural resources have left their mark on the landscape. The long North Korean presence in the area has also had a substantial impact on the local environment this wasteland used to be one of the their logging camps. This villager, Mikhail, told us what he knew about the Korean logging camps in the area.
MIKHAIL PAVLICHENKO, Chegdomyn resident: They say theyre like labour camps. The workers are afraid of their supervisors, afraid of punishment. According to rumours, they had cells, where you can only sit, and they would be placed in the cells, crouched for days, sometimes weeks. The relationship was such that everyone was afraid of everyone else workers afraid of supervisors, supervisors afraid of supervisors.
NARRATOR: A visit to a local North Korean logging camp confirmed what we had heard, the North Korean loggers were working unattended under the North Korean flag. Nikolai headed in to the camp to try and talk to the workers, but they said they didnt know him and didnt want to talk to strangers.
NIKOLAI: How long have you been here ? I said, how long have you been here ?
NARRATOR: Having seen the camps, Nikolai is convinced the situation is still exactly as it was when he worked here.
NIKOLAI: Not much has changed not the way they dress, the food, the conditions. I feel even that things have got a bit worse.
NARRATOR: On our return Nikolai met three North Koreans in a local café. One of them told him he was a driver, waiting for his boss, who was attending a meeting for the local North Korean authorities. This is a North Korean Communist Party Secretary who we met travelling alone on a train in the Far Eastern interior. Despite the denials of the Russian authorities, his presence confirms the North Korean regimes hierarchy continue to operate a de facto dictatorship on Russian soil. For North Koreans living and working in Russia, the gulag lives on.