"North Korea Likely to Build Mass Drone Production Facilities Through Technicians Dispatched to Russia"

▲ Alabuga Drone Factory in Russia

Projections have been raised that North Korea, which has dispatched a large number of workers to a Russian factory producing drones for deployment in the war in Ukraine, could bring such drone production facilities and methods back to North Korea.

On the 14th (local time), the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a U.S. think tank, and the George W. Bush Institute released a report titled "Human Rights Abuses in the Alabuga Drone Manufacturing Process: How China, Iran, and North Korea Enable Russia's War Machine," which exposes examples highlighting the cooperation framework among the world's leading authoritarian nations: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

The report explained that to deploy drones in the war in Ukraine, Russia is producing thousands of suicide drones annually at the Alabuga drone factory by combining Chinese funding and parts, Iranian design technology, and labor recruited from places including North Korea.

A significant portion of the factory workforce, numbering up to 12,000 people, is filled by forced labor sent by the Kim Jong-un regime in North Korea, and these workers have 90 percent of their wages confiscated.

There are also Russian teenagers who were deceived by claims of a simple work-and-study program, as well as women from South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia who came believing they would work in hotels and the service industry.

The existence of the Alabuga factory in Tatarstan, located about 900 kilometers east of the Russian capital Moscow, has been mentioned multiple times through the media during the course of the war in Ukraine.

Reports indicate that Iranian Shahed drones are mass-produced there.

The report diagnosed, "The (North Korean) technicians dispatched to Alabuga will observe the modifications made by Russia to constantly improving drones and return to Pyongyang with invaluable lessons learned from working on mass-production drone assembly lines."

It further warned, "North Korea, possessing an increasingly sophisticated and expanded drone program, poses a new dimension of military challenge to South Korea, Japan, and U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific region."

Victor Cha, CSIS Korea Chair and co-author of the report, stated that North Korea's participation in Russia's war in Ukraine was because "North Korea judged that its military and munitions industry needed to become much more advanced in both battlefield drone operation and drone production," adding, "Aside from gaining material benefits, this is one of the main reasons North Korea participated in this cooperation."

Thae Yong-ho, a former lawmaker of the People Power Party and a former North Korean diplomat who attended as a seminar panelist, emphasized that South Korea should pay attention to the fact that "North Korea can easily replicate the exact same factory (as the Alabuga drone factory) inside North Korea."

Joseph Kim, policy program manager at the Bush Institute and co-author of the report, said, "This case illustrates what CRINK (China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea) cooperation looks like better than any other."

Cha pointed out, "This is a military issue, but equally importantly, it is a human rights issue," noting that at this factory where passports are confiscated and forced labor effectively takes place, "what we are witnessing is state-sponsored human trafficking."

Peter Park, director of LiNK (Liberty in North Korea), a North Korean refugee human rights organization, pointed out that from the perspective of the North Korean regime, it appears to be dispatching forced labor manpower while taking the risk of factory workers contacting foreigners in order to target the rewards in exchange for Russia's support.

Former lawmaker Thae conjectured that, much like the case where North Korea sent hundreds of female workers to tomato farms in Poland, North Korea will set up large-scale dormitories right near the Alabuga factory, effectively trapping and monitoring workers there to cut them off from outside information.

Cha stated that CSIS is also looking into cases where Chinese and Russian companies utilize North Korean forced labor in North Korea's special economic zones.

He added that these companies send products produced using North Korean forced labor into global supply chains by labeling them as Chinese or Russian-made.

Cha noted, "We have confirmed the fact that more Russian companies have advanced into North Korea's special economic zones," adding that "large-scale infrastructure construction is also taking place at the Tumen River-Khasan railway border crossing" connecting the two countries.

Seminar attendees argued that it is necessary to counter the authoritarian network of CRINK nations through U.S. and international sanctions against forced labor and human rights abuses, as well as by exposing the human rights situation in North Korea that has faded since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Olivia Enos, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a U.S. think tank, emphasized, "There has been a decline in strategic thinking regarding how to effectively integrate responses to the Kim Jong-un regime's human rights abuses into overall U.S. policy toward North Korea," adding, "The United States must cooperate with its ally South Korea to counter the threats posed by the North Korean regime to human rights, and undermine the foundations, sources of revenue, and means of maintaining power that prop up the regime."

Enos explained that immediate response tools include Global Magnitsky Act sanctions, which involve asset freezes and travel bans on individuals and entities involved in serious and grave human rights abuses, as well as a "rebuttable presumption" principle that bans the import of Chinese products into the United States unless it is proven that North Korean labor was not used.

Cha said, "Although North Korean authorities are using Russian funds to build new buildings and provide 'bread and circuses' to residents, the anger will not disappear. This is because people lost children, spouses, siblings, and parents due to the government's botched pandemic response."

(Photo: Capture from CSIS website, Yonhap News)

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