Monitors put North Korea's overseas labour take at up to $800 million

North Korea earned an estimated $450 million to $800 million in 2025 from workers sent abroad, a group of 11 governments said on 16 September. The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team put the number of labourers at between 35,600 and 101,280 at the end of last year, in at least 17 countries. Almost all of them were in China or Russia.

The team includes the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and the Netherlands. It was set up in October 2024 after the UN panel of experts on North Korea lost its mandate. This is its third report, after papers on North Korea-Russia military cooperation and on cyber operations.

UN Security Council resolution 2397 set a repatriation deadline in 2019. The deadline was not met. The new report says host governments should send workers home and stop issuing permits. A joint statement from the 11 states said the revenue funds nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and that those who run or assist the network should be held to account.

Where the workers are

China holds the largest group, an estimated 20,000 to 70,000 people. Between 10,000 and 20,000 were sent home from 2023 to 2025. About 10,000 new workers arrived between January 2025 and January 2026. Many are in Liaoning and Jilin, in garment shops, fisheries, electronics plants and IT rooms.

Russia holds 15,000 to 30,000. Some work in defence plants, manufacturing and shipyards. The monitors say some are building military drones on Russian soil while the war in Ukraine continues. Moscow has used student visas to present labourers as students. Each worker in Russia is estimated to generate about $7,500 a year. Front companies named in secondary coverage include Red Star Trading Co. and Korea Rakwon Trading Co. in Vladivostok.

Most of the detail comes from current or former labourers, not from Pyongyang. The range is wide because the programme is designed not to be counted. A floor of 35,600 and a ceiling of 101,280 is the team's way of saying the true number sits somewhere in a band that still violates the same resolution.

Hours, wages, share taken

Workers overseas, the report says, do 12 to 18 hours a day, six or seven days a week. The North Korean state takes 80 to 90 percent of the wage. IT workers are a growing slice of the hard-currency take. That slice matters because it can be run from rented rooms rather than from factory gates that neighbours can photograph.

The New York Times separately described the human cost of Kim Jong-un's current leverage as running from coal mines to diplomatic postings. The MSMT paper is narrower. It is an accounts document: headcount bands, host countries, a dollar range, and a list of sectors that now includes drone lines in Russia.

Enforcement sits with the hosts. China can slow new arrivals. Russia can stop disguising factory hands as students. Neither has an incentive that matches the 11-nation statement. For as long as those two markets stay open, the $450 million to $800 million band is a budget line for missile work, not a residual from construction sites in the 2000s.

The next report that would change the picture is a verified drop in the China and Russia bands, or evidence that the drone factories have been cleared. Until then the 2019 deadline remains a date on a resolution that the workers, and their hosts, have outlasted.