Russia has been dodging U.N. sanctions and hiring North Korean workers to push back against the U.S.-led maximum-pressure policy, while supplementing the shrinking labor supply in its Far East, experts say. “Russia and, to a certain extent, China do not want to completely follow the U.S. sanctions lead,” said Ken Gause, director of the Adversary Analytics Program at research group CNA. “That allows North Korea to continue to bring in resources and funding into the regime, which maintains stability inside the regime but also makes it very difficult for the U.S. to pursue its maximum-pressure strategy,” Gause said. North Korean workers employed overseas see little of their wages, most of which provide Pyongyang with much-needed hard currency. Most North Korean workers whom Moscow employs work on construction projects or in the logging, agriculture and textile industries, and they are usually sent to Russia’s Far East in North Asia, said Troy Stangarone, senior director of the Korea Economic Institute. “Russia faces a shortage of workers in its Far East and a declining population,” Stangarone said, “so the workers provide Russia needed labor at cheap costs.” FILE – Security Council members vote for new sanctions against North Korea after its most recent nuclear test, at U.N. headquarters, New York, March 7, 2013.Russia has been evading U.N. sanctions that required member states to repatriate North Korean workers back by a December 22 deadline, according to a FILE – Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reacts during a news conference in Moscow, Jan. 16, 2019.Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said last week that FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a press briefing following Russia-North Korea talks at the Far Eastern Federal University campus on the Russky Island in Vladivostok, Apr. 25, 2019.On a strategic level, Gause said Moscow’s opposition to U.S.-led policy is, in part, its attempt to defeat Washington’s effort to extend a liberal democratic order in the region as Moscow tries to exert its own influence there in the great-power competition with the U.S.  “There’s some of this that is part of the great-power competition in which Russia is pushing back against a liberal democratic order which the United States is part of,” said Gause. “If the U.S. were to shift away from the maximum pressure to a policy more aligned with China and Russia, they could declare this as a victory in terms of their influence on the international stage.” Stangarone said a way for Moscow to exert its influence on Pyongyang is by permitting North Koreans to work in Russia.  Foreign labor as a tool“On a political level, the use of foreign labor is one tool the Russian government uses to maintain close ties with Pyongyang,” he said. As a way to enforce sanctions, Stangarone said, “there needs to be a clarification that North Koreans are unable to work abroad regardless of what type of visa they may be on.” Ha said the U.S. should sanction North Korean and non-North Korean companies that help employing North Korean workers in Russia, just as the Treasury Department did early in January against two North Korean entities that facilitate employment in China.“Increasing designations of similar companies abroad, such as in Russia, will remind these violators, whether it be the company hiring North Korean workers or the host nation of that company, that they risk penalties,” Ha said. Connie Kim, Oh Taek-sung and Kim Seon-myung contributed to this report, which originated in VOA’s Korean service. 
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