Some North Korean workers remain in Vietnam on temporary visas now four months past a UN deadline requiring their repatriation, Hanoi said in a recent report to the UN, blaming precautions taken by the DPRK government to prevent a potential spread of the coronavirus in its territory for the delay.
According to Vietnam’s final implementation report on the DPRK laborers measure, “to date, there are 31 nationals of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea remaining in” the country.
The report, dated April 4 but only uploaded to the UN 1718 Sanctions Committee website in recent days, said that “due to the measures taken by the [DPRK] in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic,” the “mentioned individuals are not able to return to their home country for the time being.”
The DPRK’s decision to “clos[e] its borders and suspend… the entry of foreign visitors and all aviation and railway transportation to and from China and Russia” has made the repatriation of the final 31 workers impossible, it added.
The workers are on “temporary stay visas,” the report continued, seeking to ensure the committee that this is “not a working visa, thus they cannot work.”
Vietnam said last August in a midterm implementation report that it had already sent home over half of the 94 workers registered in the country at the time of UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2397’s passage in December 2017.
Since last summer, a further 12 DPRK nationals have been repatriated, the new implementation report said, adding that Vietnam “reaffirms its commitment to fulfilling its obligations” to enforce North Korea-related sanctions.
Though Vietnam follows Russia in blaming severed transportation channels for failing to meet the UN deadline, North Korea did not shut its borders to travelers under COVID-19 measures until over one month after that December 22 deadline.
UNSC Resolution 2397 stated that “Member States shall repatriate to the DPRK all DPRK nationals earning income in that Member State’s jurisdiction and all DPRK government safety oversight attachés monitoring DPRK workers abroad immediately but no later than 24 months from the date of adoption of this resolution.”
Young North Korean waitresses as well as the oversight attachés or managers were known to work in and operate a few restaurants in Vietnam, including separate restaurants under the “Koryo” name in both Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi, and the “Pyongyang Gwan,” also in Hanoi.
The Ho Chi Minh location was found to have shut in 2018, while both the restaurants in Hanoi appeared to continue to operate with North Korean staff after the December deadline, according to Naver blog posts from South Korean tourists.
Contacted by NK News on Monday, a worker at the Pyongyang Gwan answered the phone but said the restaurant is closed and that they didn’t know when it would reopen.
The Koryo Restaurant was still open and taking reservations on Monday, however, though an employee said the staff were no longer putting on musical performances, a common fixture of DPRK-run eateries abroad.
The 2020 UN Panel of Experts (PoE) report on global DPRK sanctions enforcement efforts, released Friday, also details information technology (IT) workers’ presence in Vietnam up until last last year.
A member state submitted to the PoE information that a Vietnamese company named Albatross Co Ltd “has been working with information technology developers of the [DPRK] who were assessed as still working in Viet Nam as of November 2019.”
Albatross, it said, “sourced these information technology developers from at least two companies of the [DPRK] that are related to the Munitions Industry Department (MID): the Korea National Development Investment Company and the Korea Mangyongdae Computer Technology Corporation.”
The member state also said that the MID “has been dispatching” IT workers to Vietnam “for the purpose of revenue generation, including through subordinate entities such as the Korea Sobaeksu Trading Corporation (also known as the Korea Sobaeksu United Corporation), which was also involved in procurement for the [DPRK’s] nuclear programme.”
Vietnam denied the allegations in a response to the panel, however, saying that “authorities had not found any workers or information technology experts of the [DPRK] working in the Albatross Company.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un traveled to Hanoi in February 2019 for an official state visit to Vietnam following his summit with U.S. President Donald Trump, at which the two countries praised their long history of relations and promised to develop them further.
A DPRK foreign ministry statement released for the one-year anniversary of that summit last month pledged to “develop cooperation and exchanges onto a higher stage in all fields of economy, science and technology, national defense, sports, culture and art, press and information” between the two countries.
The two countries celebrated the 70th anniversary of establishing bilateral diplomatic relations in January.
Source: NKNews