All remaining N. Korean workers to be sacked and sent home

All remaining N. Korean workers to be sacked and sent home. August. 02, 2018 07:09. by In-Chan Hwang hic@donga.com.
Qatar, which used to be one of the countries where North Korean workers were seconded to earn dollars, has announced that it will send back all of the North Korean workers left in Qatar as an effort to implement sanctions against North Korea in advance.

Voice of America (VOA) announced Wednesday that North Korea Sanctions Resolution No. 2387 Implementation Report, which was submitted to the UN Securities Council by Qatar on July 23 and released recently, stipulates that the remaining North Korean workers should be sent back to North Korea by adjusting with their employers. The UN Securities Council specified that all North Korean workers should be sent to North Korea by the end of 2019 as it adopted Sanctions Resolution No. 2397 in December 2017. Some 1,000 North Korean workers stayed in Qatar until September 2017, but as of June, only 150 North Korean workers left in Qatar. As the Gulf Arab nation has decided to push forward repatriation ahead of the due date set by the UN Resolution, the North’s dollar flow is expected to dry up more.

Some analysis say that North Korean workers in Russia have been recently repatriated. South Korean government authorities see that it is highly probable that irregular operation of two passenger planes and three transport planes of Air Koryo on the Pyeongyang-Vladivostok route on Monday was used to repatriate North Korean workers rather than preparing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s visit to Russia. “There are some 20,000 North Koreans working in Russia and I am aware that a gradual repatriation is underway,” said a source.