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 />Agnes Jongerius said that This is slave labor,<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 />Ms. Kowalska scoffed at allegations of abuse and said the North Koreans she managed enjoyed<br />"a normal life." "They asked us for advice on what to buy their wives and kids," she said.<br />Kim said that Our girls lived as if they were in prison,<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.<br />But the continued presence of these workers in Poland — a NATO ally at the heart of the European Union — underscores how difficult it is to fully sever<br />North Korea from the global economy, even as the nation accelerates efforts to build a nuclear missile capable of striking the United States.<br />Poland sent soldiers to fight alongside Americans in Iraq,<br />but is nonetheless one of the few countries still hosting North Korean workers over Washington’s objections.
