World Cup Shows Need to Crack Down on Kim’s Labor Exploitation

Excerpt

When tourists flood Qatar for the FIFA World Cup later this month, they will find themselves—likely without knowing it—in facilities that North Korean laborers helped build. The glitzy new hotels and ultramodern stadiums constructed for soccer’s biggest event hide an ugly reality: the deplorable living and working conditions of the people who built them—and the governments that were eager to exploit their labor for profit. For the North Korean regime, these overseas workers were a useful way to evade international sanctions and earn hard currency, in part to finance its burgeoning nuclear and missile programs. For the Qataris, it was a cheap source of docile labor.

If the Biden administration is serious about holding human rights violators accountable and curbing North Korea’s military threat, it needs to put an end to this practice—and get creative about closing the loopholes in North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s sanctions evasion playbook.