Even in Poland, Workers’ Wages Flow to North Korea<br />Soon afterward, Ms. Kowalska said, she stopped hiring North Korean workers “because it became such a sensitive issue.” She added<br />that she was now retired and no longer managed North Korean workers.<br />“This is slave labor,” said Agnes Jongerius, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, who<br />has urged European authorities to force Poland to stop admitting North Korean workers<br />Ms. Kowalska, now 67, said her company, Armex, assumed responsibility for the workers,<br />and then established a relationship with the North Korean partners who had brought them to Poland.<br />“Our girls lived as if they were in prison,” said Kim Tae-san, a North Korean defector who worked in<br />the Czech Republic from 2000 to 2002 supervising 200 young North Korean women in a shoe factory.<br />According to research by Mr. Breuker and his colleagues, Armex received its workers from the Rungrado General Trading Corporation, a North Korean supplier of overseas workers sanctioned by the United States in 2016<br />and accused of funding the department that oversees the nuclear weapons program.
