March 14, 2025
SEOUL – North Korean IT workers, who are forced to work for the Kim Jong-un regime to generate illegal revenue, must endure grueling conditions, strict surveillance and intense pressure to meet brutal workload quotas just to get paid, according to a report released by a human rights organization.
The report, written by Pscore, a Seoul-based nongovernmental organization advocating for human rights in North Korea, highlighted the need to recognize North Korean tech workers as victims of serious human rights abuses under the Kim regime, shifting the conventional focus away from the illicit revenue they generate.
“It is critical to recognize these IT workers as victims of North Korea’s cyber agenda,” underscored the Pscore report titled “Decoding Crimes: Unveiling North Korea’s Cyber Threats,” which was presented Wednesday during an event on North Korean human rights hosted by the Canadian Embassy in Seoul.
The report provides a rare glimpse into a dismal reality for North Korean IT workers, based on in-person interviews in 2024 with pseudonymously named North Korean defectors who were formerly IT employees and professionals.
“Due to their precarious working and living conditions, we believe that even the regime’s highly skilled workers are deprived of various human rights,” Jasmin Ringel, a researcher at Pscore, explained during the event. The report was one of the projects supported by the Embassy of Canada Fund for Human Rights in North Korea as part of Canada’s efforts to promote human rights in the country.
The report disclosed that North Korean IT workers typically work over 10 hours daily, often overnight, to serve international clients across time zones, resulting in sleep deprivation and irregular routines. Workers live in cramped accommodations, with five to six workers from the same project team sharing small spaces. Their movement is severely restricted, limited to one daily walk and an occasional outing once a week.
“We sleep a bit during the day, and since it’s a system where we work during the nighttime, you do assignments through the internet at night and continue to develop (them) during the day,” Kang Ju-won, a former North Korean IT worker who developed programs overseas in Southeast Asia, said of his work routine in an interview with Pscore in October 2024.
Kim Ji-min, a North Korean defector and IT expert, pointed out how stress and pressure to perform at the workplace greatly affect the mental health of IT employees, predisposing them to depression and panic attacks.
“He mentions that his co-workers have taken their own lives due to these strenuous conditions. Such incidents illustrate how these difficult and intense conditions consume IT workers to an extreme extent,” the report disclosed, based on Kim’s account.
Employees are required to fulfill strict monthly income quotas set by the North Korean government, according to the report. Noncompliance leads to public humiliation and severe psychological harassment by the team leaders.
“Some workers even face physical abuse as a means of coercion. Verbal threats and constant performance monitoring are common, creating a work environment where many workers experience psychological trauma,” the English-language report reads.
Workers have to remit 90 to 95 percent of their earnings to North Korean authorities, which is presented as an act of patriotism.
“I only received about 5 percent of the money I earned as an allowance. It was big back then, too. In North Korea, you have to do unpaid work,” Na Jeong-seok, a former IT worker who entered the Information Industry Guidance Bureau of North Korea in 2012, told Pscore in December 2024.
Salaries are provided only to those who fulfill strict quotas.
“I couldn’t sleep and kept working. I was very stressed because my assignment wasn’t going well,” Na, who was selected to be dispatched to China as a researcher after working in North Korea for 3 years, said. “Even if I can’t secure the money for myself, there’s a lot of pressure to fulfill the quota.”
IT workers, who are compelled to use false names to secure employment at foreign businesses primarily based in China and Southeast Asia, are also subject to round-the-clock surveillance.
“(The supervisors) tell (the IT workers) that ‘the moment you turn this program off, you’re already a bad guy’ to make them aware that they are being intentionally monitored,” Kim Ji-min told Pscore in August 2024. “It’s human to want social interactions and to communicate, but meeting and communicating in person is blocked and online communication isn’t allowed.”