from china and south korea most of the young women who work here aren't students from pyongyang. they live and sleep above the restaurant and in many cases and not allowed to leave the premises for years. every evening at the same time they change their outfits and get ready for the big show. the. leak. from. their a $130.00 north korean restaurants like this worldwide 3 of them in cambodia they're believed to make several $1000000.00 a year but the waitresses don't get paid

a cent the big bucks western hard currency flow directly into the regime's secret coffers. this is just one example of north korea's systematic exploitation of its own population. north korean workers are deployed around the world even in the european union such as here in poland we found north korean work brigades on a building site they were promised good wages and decent working conditions only to be treated like slaves. in the evening after a 12 hour shift the workers the bussed back to their hostels. for

. those. of. them monitored around the clock by north korean agents. one of them however decided to talk to us. friends and i was so no problem coming here on your own. you know on sundays we can go out alone. i know what would happen if you got caught. played accuse me of this and that and i'd be interrogated by north korean state security here in poland. if they were not satisfied they'd send me back to pyongyang for further interrogation and i might even get put in prison. he says and so you have a job here. i came here to make money. no matter how hard i

work can't make money. for the working conditions are miserable we have no freedom we have to spend our lives crammed together in groups so you're probably aware that they keep almost all of our wages we only get a fraction that you know. it's yours you know i'm in my thirty's and my wife and daughter are at home. next to nothing but i have to do this for them and i have no choice. martin day slavery north korea sends well trained to poland to toil away in ships construction sites. because families are effectively held hostage in north

korea. their relatives back home will often face severe punishment. because it paid. the rest goes to the regime as a cash. largely unnoticed by the international community north korea has sent laborers all over the world believed to number up 215-0000 in all about 40000 of them are in russia and up to 100000 in china north koreans also work in kuwait malaysia cambodia mongolia amman. the united arab emirates and in a number of african countries the un has become aware of this income for pyongyang and is determined to drain the source's. experts estimate that the regime makes up to $1000000000.00 a year this way. now and where ever money is earned it ends up

at office 39. dollars it conducts money transactions with absolute authority to. defect to say the office is directly controlled by kim jong un and manages the leadership secret accounts what's called the palace economy. but where exactly in pyongyang is office 39 located and just how many millions flow into its coffers. when we asked the north korean official he and his interpreter feign ignorance. to believe i don't understand the question but perhaps you know more. have you ever heard of floor 39. and 39 floors are we talking about high rises.

office 39 is one of the best kept secrets of the kim regime only north koreans who've escaped are able to talk about it openly. so at a secret location we meet a man who used to work for the office he was based in china his task smuggling foreign currency. then he escaped his position was so important that the north korean regime has threatened to kill him. afraid of being identified he had plastic surgery to alter his face and even then he's only willing to be filmed from behind the corner from james holmes.

north korea ostensibly has a planned economy. this means that the state takes care of supplying the population with food and other goods. but in north korea this system has been largely abandoned as the supply of food and goods for daily use has as such collapsed. as a result the majority of the north korean population has to be self-sufficient. and resort to the black market. here to understand office 39 and the capitalist structures in place in north korea it's important to understand its history. in 1991 the world's biggest communist country the soviet union was dissolved and north korea lost one of its most important trading partners. while many formerly communist states now switched to a marketing. anime the kims continued to further isolate themselves. in 1994

the year kim jong il succeeded his late father a devastating famine descended on the country during the great famine in the mid ninety's when the north korean starved to death do public distribution system collapsed and witnesses describe seeing loved ones of dead bodies in the streets anywhere between $1.00 to $3000000.00 north koreans. so what's happened is the north koreans know knew that if there was a size they could no longer trust a lot of the state. and it was the rural population in particular who had to be self-sufficient black market started to emerge known as john madang today there are an unknown number of these markets throughout the country 400 of them are even officially licensed providing tax income for the regime. most of the buying selling and bartering here involves food and goods from china all manner of currencies are

accepted especially u.s. dollars and chinese yuan. to china and north korea share a border that is more than a 1000 kilometers long but over 80 percent of that border is not even secured with barbed wire. people in the border region are subject to little control by the state and they enjoy substantial trade with china this trade is the basis for the black market in north korea. the biggest beneficiaries from the informal economy are government officials in pyongyang because of their loyalty although mainly out of financial self-interest the regime permits them to trade and over the years they've become wealthy they sell luxury goods smuggle roll materials and invent. in real estate they're called door to

masters of money and enjoy the luxury and freedom afforded to them by the regime but that loyalty comes at a price. many don't see you hold senior government positions including at office 39. and the. like this man who's been living in hiding in seoul since he fled the north. while growing up in the ninety's he witnessed how north korea developed increasingly capitalist structures before his escape he was responsible for exports likely the offices most profitable business fearing reprisals from the regime he likewise does not wish to be recognized. for his whole you heard my position and

a rank within the organization was management employ you. i was in charge of foreign trade. where the departments that did trade with europe. sure a lot of them in fact. how many until a few years ago the north korean state insurance company k n i c had to prompt chin an innocuous looking apartment block in the city. from here 6 north korean officials made deals with major european insurance. home. office 39 has a department for foreign insurance policies this department conducts insurance fraud. for example they used to reinsure russian

m 18 helicopters that were nearing the end of their operational lives. they. simply hidden in concrete terms this department signed contracts with large european insurance firms there's a chevy initially they would pay the insurance premiums of say $5000.00 a month. at eventually the helicopters were blown up or set on fire to collect the insurance some. punish. her as you can and that amounted to maybe $2000000.00 alone you know. it was. just one case among many in 2015 the european union added the cayenne i see to it sanctions list accusing the company of co financing pyongyang's nuclear weapons program via office that he 9 experts estimate that wrecked helicopters and similar

tricks helped the kim regime break in several $100000000.00. north korea uses its global network of embassies to ferry money back to pyongyang government officials enjoying diplomatic immunity transport the money in cash in their flight baggage a simple but efficient way of ensuring the funds keep calm flowing. north with embassies as a defensive fun symbol to its often mainly ceremonial. letter to function is financial is also illegal mainly. north korean diplomats are basically class couriers for kim. they're into for the rest of this is where they may be drug lords and maybe weapons smugglers that they carry definitive passports so they called us . providing military supply training

much of that has been done through north korea's embassies particularly in africa and the middle east so of all the countries in the middle east current syrian arab republic has the greatest levels of prohibited cooperation with north korean military and. the father of the current syrian dictator had been on friendly terms with the north korean leader kim il sung since the 1960 s. pyongyang supplied syria with military personnel as well as weapons and ammunition in its war against israel. an important source of income which exists to this day. using tactics resembling those of 18th century pirates office 39 operates cargo ships under folds flags and fake names according to the un this is enabled north

korea to send large quantities of weapons and military equipment to syria. between 201220178 says at least 40 shipments of prohibited cargo from north korea passed through the suez canal but then the u.n. managed to have one of the deliveries intercepted. so we've found something cargo on its way to syria. resistant tiles which could be used chemical weapons development but also missile fuel is highly corrosive such tars could be used for ballistic missile. programs well the bill of lading clearly gave an address in syria to stop bush from company for serious scientific studies research center the s.s.

all see which is responsible for serious ballistic missile and chemical weapons development program. the russian state insists the chemical weapons produced in the s.s. labs have been used by syrian dictator bashar al assad against his own people for years. one 3rd of all buildings in syria have been destroyed the regime in damascus has been planning for the time off to the civil war ends and hopes to receive billions of dollars from international danas for the country's reconstruction. the armies of work has required to come from north korea as formally agreed by the 2 countries at a meeting in june 29th seen here to pyongyang is looking forward to a lucrative business. the money to buy office $39.00 it goes straight into the coffers of the leadership. it is used on the one hand to provide for next 3 items

it is used to pay for the demur see these beds cars that somehow found their way into the earth korea despite the sanctions but it also is also used and this is probably more important to deliver the best actors you can you can trade. as early estimate eighty's came in joe ill start a training the most talent as children in terms of method medical bill it's easy to program the abilities to be called cyber hackers they're also good money or run somewhere like the other crossfire's for example is considered to come from the north koreans it is the biggest cyber attack the world has ever seen hundreds of thousands of computers around the world in about 150. country's rendered useless now the u.s. government is publicly placing the blame for that cyber assault uniquely dubbed want to cry squarely on kim jong un's army of hackers british intelligence officials and microsoft had previously concluded the groups associated with the

north korean regime were responsible for the want to cry hack. in seoul specialists have north korean hack in the site's simon says a consultant a south korean intelligence agency. we've been following the activities of north korean hackers for 10 years now in the past they've been primarily attacking the south korean ministry of defense and other government agencies but since around 2015 it's become clear that their interest has shifted to international banks. north korea has limited access to the internet with only 1000 ip addresses available to the country many are used by north korean computer specialists to attack other countries experts say that between 601300 hackers are at work for the regime an estimated

$2000000000.00 may have been diverted by young highly trained north korean hackers to fund the country's nuclear weapons program. north korea is changing an impoverished communist state is now a country with a highly flexible shadow economy. and as with commercial companies all that matters are american dollars cash for kim the workers here and now slaving away not for the revolution but for the wealth of their leader and his cronies as the gap between rich and poor widens. while the population in pyongyang enjoy constant growth in prosperity the u.n. says that 40 percent of the rural population still suffer from malnutrition in order to control its people the regime employs oldskool also a tarion role north korea's underground economy on the other hand is 21st century

capitalist dandong china. north korea's gateway to the world and the symbol of how futile the un's efforts have been to dry up kim sources of cash. the sino korean friendship bridge across the yalu river has connected the 2 nations since $943.00 every day trucks queue up in front of the customs checkpoint it brings together smugglers traders and also the agents and entrepreneurs of off. this 39 all of them hoping to make a quick deal here. china is by far north korea's most important trading partner according to economics experts it accounts for 90 percent of north korea's export trade.

thousands of north korean women i believe to work for textile manufacturers in the dun dong region. posing as businessmen and equipped with hidden cameras we film inside one such factory chinese textile companies hire north koreans because their wages are lower than those of the domestic workforce the seamstresses work day and night and often sleep on the company premises many are effectively locked up there for years far away from their families. will meet together with a team of labor lawyers trade experts and data specialists remco breaka has been investigating whether the european browns work with chinese companies that directly or in directly employing north koreans. is different things

one of the things we were actually hoping to establish was the use of north korean workers in chinese factories. really to our surprise is that yes we do have north korean workers working on the slave like and this is inside the more than that time these factories outsource to north korean factories in north korea. these methods to prove the existence of the significance of. north korean slave labor in the supply chain of some of the world's leading clothing companies. broke his team took an especially close look at one chinese textile company with the fur . name best or easton when the firm's own website states that it relies on low labor cost and abundant human resources the list of customers reads like a who's who of international fashion browns the home dest website features this men's

jackets described as korean imported the buttons bare the words armani jeans using trade databases brought his team analyzed on this business dealings between 20132019 the databases use customs information showing which goods to send back and forth between firms in different countries so what happens is that china sense the material to make sure isn't close to north korea one month later this and so. and then you have those clothes are shipped to the netherlands or to germany or to america this route into our stores between 2013 and december 26th form dest sent around $10000000.00 worth of fabrics and more materials to north korea during the same period the company received finished garments worth almost $25000000.00 from north korea. customs classify

textiles by so-called harmonized system codes a lady sweater for example will have a different h.s. coach than a pair of men's jeans. we take a look at a chest code 6201 it stands for men's anoraks and coats including the armani jacket on the website. between 2013 and december 26th jane vaughan dest imported products with this code worth $12000000.00 from north korea the same code is also found with delivery. from von dest to europe and the u.s. among the customers diesel and armani. armani jackets that look exactly like the one on the on their website can also be bought in europe this one costs 219 year owes it's impossible to prove beyond doubt that garments like this one made in

north korea but at the same time can it be ruled out. we asked the companies implicated to comment armani's response we confirm the desk is one of our suppliers and such is regularly subject to checks and inspections the result of these checks being that no finished products are manufactured in north korea like all our suppliers it is also required to declare which subcontractors it uses and where these are concerned it is also the case that none are in north korea. we also wrote to von dest the company offered no explanation as to why and on what scale it trades with north korea. one thing can be said for certain big name fashion brands have their goods manufactured by a chinese company that does business with north korea a country where workers have no rights where human life counts for little or

nothing and break his investigation shows that this is far from an isolated case chinese firms use factories in north korea to produce goods worth hundreds of millions of dollars. for years and years we've heard testimonies from north korean escapees who were in concentration camps that they have been forced to produce textile for the export markets for famous western brands and i think for the 1st time less than able to corroborate us for an external source and the through a testimony. in this same database i found the. department to bureaucratic department that is responsible for managing the production of textiles so one of the concentration comes from that. it means that we know that only by close produced by forced laborers maybe even

slave labor green may even buy clothes in the netherlands in germany or for your in america that was made in concentration camp by people who will never see the light of day again these are the kinds of constants you don't leave and. that is just too horrific to to put in words and were complicit. hundreds of thousands of men and women secretly ensure the survival of the pyongyang regime their future is a sacrificed for the not sure reus lifestyles of the powers that be and also for western consumerism and convenience came jonas perhaps not so much an unhinged dictator as a coolly calculating businessman who runs his country like a company. and office $39.00 does plenty of business with everything and everyone including us.

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the right of climate change. africa's most of. what's in store for the past. ones used to come for the future and the c.w. comes for to make a city to the multimedia inside. culture. that cry and i'm game fishing those that $17000000.00 land on the homes of killed worldwide sure so that we can know but it's not just be on a little subtle suffering it's the environment we went on a journey to find ways out of the motivation if you want to know how awake lifted the priest i'm a whole just changed as an atheist is listening to our podcast on the plane comes.

upon. this is g.w. news a wired up from. an increasingly bloody crackdown against protesters in at myanmar police opened fire with live rounds after stun grenades and tear gas failed to disperse the crowds we'll go live to yangon for the latest also coming up on the show dozens of pro-democracy activists in hong kong turn themselves into the police and are charge.