Archive for the ‘Association No.2’ Category

North Korean logger detained in Russian east

Friday, March 19th, 2010

According to the Associated Press (via Los Angeles Times):

The North Korean’s note, scrawled in pen, was simple: “I want to go to South Korea. Why? To find freedom. Freedom of religion, freedom of life.”

The ex-logger, on the run from North Korean authorities, handed the note over to a South Korean missionary in the Russian city of Vladivostok last week in hopes it would lead to political asylum.

Just before he was to meet Thursday with the International Organization for Migrants, a team of men grabbed him, slapped handcuffs on him and drove off, rights activists in Moscow said Friday. He was spirited away to the eastern port city of Nakhokda, where he is sure to be handed back over to North Korean officials and repatriated to his communist homeland, activists said in Seoul.

Police in Vladivostok refused to comment. A senior South Korean diplomat in Vladivostok said he had no information. Officials from the U.S. consulate in Vladivostok could not be reached for comment.

The 51-year-old would be the third North Korean logger in Russia in a week to make a bid for asylum. On March 9, two other North Koreans who had fled their jobs as loggers managed to get into the South Korean consulate in Vladivostok.

Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reported last week that two North Koreans climbed a fence, ran past the guards and entered the consulate, saying they wanted political asylum. ITAR-Tass carried a similar report.

The incidents focused attention on the precarious existence of tens of thousands of North Koreans sent by the impoverished regime to work in neighboring Russia.

Russian government figures from 2007 put the number of North Korean laborers at 32,600, most of them working in logging in the remote east.

The Rev. Peter Chung, a Seoul-based activist, said there are about 40,000 North Korean loggers in Russia, but that some 10,000 of them have fled their work sites. Some are finding work as day laborers while others are in hiding as they try to map out how to win asylum in foreign diplomatic missions.

The North Korean described the conditions as unbearable. His government took half his meager wages, while the North Korean company operating the logging camp took 35 percent. He kept just 15 percent — about $60 a month — an arrangement that rendered him “virtually a slave,” he told activists.

He eventually fled the logging camp, taking odd jobs to survive. He also became a Christian, Chung and Kim Hi-tae said, which could draw severe punishment, even execution, back home.

The successful asylum bid of two other former North Korean loggers inspired Kim to make a similar attempt, Chung said.

Previous posts on the North Korean loggers in Russia can be found hereMore here. And here. And here.

Read the full story below:
3rd North Korean logger attempts to defect in Russia, propelled by dream of ‘freedom of life’
Associated Press (via Los Angeles Times)
Kim Kwang Tae
3/19/2010

Share

Association No. 2 – North Korean loggers in Russia

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

tynda-bbc.JPG

The BBC ran an interesting video story on North Korean loggers felling trees in Russia.  Of course this has been going on for a long time. However, this is the first video footage of the logging facilities that has appeared in the Western media.

According to the video, North Korea’s logging concessions are managed by a company called “Association No. 2,” which is housed in a compound in northern Tynda, Russia.  According to the story, Association No. 2 receives 35% of proceeds of logging (appx $7m) some fraction of which is repatriated to the DPRK’s Ministry of Forestry.  Using the video, I located the Association No. 2 compound on Google Earth. Here is an image:

assn2.JPG

(Click on image for larger version.  You can see it in Google Maps here.)

Additional Notes:

1. I have not been able to locate the other North Korean logging camps in Russia.  If any readers can find them, please let me know.

2.  The DPRK appointed a new Minister of Forests last October.

3. Bertil Lintner on North Koreans working in Russia.

4. Andrei Lankov on the loggers.

5. Claudia Rosette on the loggers.

6. YouTube video on NKs in Russia.

Share