Overseas deployment fears have divided families across North Korea. Authorities selected soldiers with seven to eight years of service from military units in Ryanggang and Jagang provinces. Officials discharged them ahead of schedule late last month and sent them to Russia as workers. The exact number dispatched, the tasks assigned, and their specific locations remain unconfirmed. Past precedent, however, points strongly toward construction work.
The deployments have stirred conflicting reactions among affected families. There are families who think that if their son can go to Russia and earn money rather than just suffer in the military, it is not entirely a bad thing, a Daily NK source said. In households struggling financially, some parents are actually hopeful their child will bring back foreign currency. Soldiers themselves appear to share this calculus. Many view overseas dispatch as preferable to muribaechi, the forced post-discharge assignment system. That system sends demobilized soldiers to coal mines or collective farms.
Many families, however, cannot hide their anxiety. Parents who had been counting the two or three remaining years until their child’s discharge felt deflated. Word of a sudden overseas posting at the tail end of military service crushed their hopes. They have seen parents of soldiers who died in combat abroad weeping, the source said. So they feel anxious even when told it is for work, not combat. The fact that this posting is to Russia, not China, is stirring real unease.
The source described one case that captures the depth of that anxiety. A soldier used the home of a trusted local contact to relay news of his Russia posting to his parents. The family misheard dispatch as military deployment and broke down in tears. The two Korean words sound similar but carry vastly different meanings.
These days, even men in their 50s and 60s are going to Russia for wool-washing work, the source said. However, the discharged soldiers are believed to have gone mainly to the construction sector. North Korea has sent overseas workers to Russia in large numbers in recent years. The arrangement generates critical foreign currency for the state amid sweeping international sanctions. UN sanctions resolutions bar member states from hosting North Korean workers. However, Pyongyang and Moscow have largely disregarded those restrictions.
Families must weigh potential earnings against unknown dangers in a foreign country. The discharged soldiers now join a growing North Korean labor force in Russia. Their families wait anxiously for news, hoping their sons return safely with money. Pyongyang shows no sign of ending this practice despite international condemnation. Moscow continues to accept North Korean workers in defiance of UN resolutions. The human cost of this arrangement remains largely invisible to the outside world. For North Korean families, however, it is a daily reality they cannot escape. The overseas deployment fears will continue to shape decisions about military service and family finances.
