The U.N. human rights investigator for North Korea said on Monday that he would probe allegations of an estimated 20,000 North Koreans working in slave-like conditions abroad, mainly in China, Russia and the Middle East.
Marzuki Darusman, U.N. special rapporteur on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), told reporters that some of the North Korean workers are reported to be in Qatar helping build facilities for the 2022 World Cup.
Monitoring group NK Watch put the number at more than 100,000 workers in 40 countries and said they earned $3 billion annually in foreign currency for the Pyongyang government. The Seoul-based rights group also called for an investigation into complicity by host countries.