Married women in their mid-40s make up a growing share of the North Korean workers sent to China in 2026. Many of them left young children at home, and the long separation is taking a heavy emotional toll, according to a Daily NK source in China.
In the past, Pyongyang mostly sent young, unmarried women to staff Chinese factories. Middle-aged mothers now stand out among the new arrivals, and some struggle with years away from their families.
“Many of the North Korean women sent this year to garment and seafood processing plants in Jilin province are around 45,” the source told Daily NK on Monday. “There used to be a lot of young, unmarried women, but the number in their 40s really stands out now.”
The shift comes as the Kim Jong Un regime steps up its dispatch of overseas workers to China. Pyongyang sent about 10,000 laborers in a single month this summer, despite UN sanctions on the practice. UN Security Council Resolution 2397, adopted in December 2017, ordered member states to send all North Korean workers home by the end of 2019. The measure aimed to cut off a major source of foreign currency for the regime.
Observers in China have offered several explanations for the change in who gets sent abroad. Some wonder whether North Korea is running short of young, unmarried women to dispatch. Others suspect the authorities deliberately raised the share of married women to discourage defections. In their view, spouses and children left behind serve as hostages who keep the workers from fleeing.
Many of the women did leave young children in North Korea, the source said. Some of them now complain of stress from the prolonged separation.
A mother’s escape exposes the strain on North Korean workers
Late last month, a North Korean woman at a garment factory near Changbai, Jilin province, walked off the job without permission. She was caught three days later, according to the source. She reportedly slipped out in one of the trucks that carried materials in and out of the factory.
Changbai Korean Autonomous County sits on the Yalu River across from Hyesan, the capital of Ryanggang province. The border county has a large ethnic Korean population.
“Before the incident, she asked several times to visit home because she missed her child,” the source said. “Quite a few workers want to go home like her because they cannot stop thinking about their children.”
Some people in Changbai doubt that the woman left only to see her child. “She knew the situation, so would she really think leaving the factory would get her back to North Korea?” the source said. “She clearly missed her family, but people here think she was trying to escape rather than go home.”
Authorities reportedly sent her back to North Korea as soon as China’s National Day holiday ended. The weeklong holiday, often called Golden Week, starts Oct. 1 and marks the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
“They sent her back right after the holiday, so they seem to have treated leaving the workplace itself as the problem,” the source said. “Her personal circumstances, including how badly she missed her family, probably never got a fair hearing.”
North Korean overseas workers typically hand over their passports as soon as they arrive abroad. That leaves them no way to return home on their own. Most workers stay at their posts for three to five years, which effectively cuts them off from their families for that entire period.
The separation causes severe psychological distress, especially for women who left young children behind. They cannot watch their children grow up or help when an emergency strikes at home.
“North Korea may hold families hostage to stop workers from fleeing, but nothing guarantees this won’t happen again,” the source said. “Someone needs to understand the hardships of these long separations and come up with proper measures.”
This article was originally written in Korean and translated with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
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