Cracks in the Silence: North Korean Workers and the Legacy of Solidarność (A Tale of Labor Resistance from Gdańsk to Helong)

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By Ada Trybuchowska, HRNK Research Intern
Edited by Diletta De Luca, HRNK Research Associate

Introduction
          Far from the public eye, North Korean workers labor in foreign lands under intense surveillance, stripped of freedom, and denied their earnings. Pyongyang sends tens of thousands of North Korean workers to countries like China and Russia to earn foreign currency for the regime, often under conditions amounting to forced labor.[1] They pack seafood, pour concrete, and sew garments, often receiving a fraction of the pay – if any.[2] What followed in Helong, China, was not merely a labor dispute but a rare assertion of human dignity. Echoing the legacy of Poland’s Solidarność – a trade union movement born from the 1980 Gdańsk Shipyard strikes that successfully challenged a communist regime – this piece examines the Helong protest and draws lessons from Solidarność.
 
A Factory Revolt: The Helong Uprising and Its Roots
          On a bitterly cold morning in January 2024, something extraordinary happened in the China-North Korea border city of Helong. That winter, hundreds of North Korean workers rose against their overseers, staging a rare protest to demand unpaid wages and repatriation. The unrest centered around factories in Nanping Town, a key industrial hub for food processing and garment production, which employed North Koreans.[3] Laborers from over ten textile and garment plants across Helong joined the action.[4] For three tense days, nearly 3,000 North Korean migrant workers staged a mass revolt.[5] They locked their Chinese and North Korean supervisors, halted production, and demanded the wages they had been denied for months, totaling approximately $10 million.[6] This was not a typical labor dispute; it directly confronted one of the world’s most repressive systems of labor control, where obedience stems not just from state coercion but from fear for one’s family, future, and life. Tensions climaxed when, amid confrontation, one of the detained North Korean officials (dispatched to monitor the workers) was beaten to death by the protesters.[7] North Korean state security agents agreed to pay several months’ worth of wages directly to the workers on-site, and the protesters ended the strike later that day. This concession temporarily defused the situation. No other known North Korean labor protest abroad had ever reached this scale.[8]  

          The Helong uprising ruptured Pyongyang’s carefully cultivated fear system. Officially, North Korea had sent young workers abroad under the pretense of patriotism and economic duty. In reality, they formed part of a vast state-run labor export system, which dispatched tens of thousands of North Koreans to factories and construction sites across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.[9] As of 2024, an estimated 100,000 North Koreans continued working in foreign countries.[10] Although some deployments remain nominally legal, they often bypass international labor laws and violate UN Security Council Resolution 2397, which banned North Korean overseas labor and required all such workers to be repatriated by 2019, aiming to cut off the regime’s illicit income for its nuclear program.[11] Due to inconsistent enforcement, many remain abroad, creating a gray economy worth up to US $500 million annually for the North Korean regime.[12]

          The Helong protest began after workers discovered that colleagues repatriated to North Korea had never received their promised wages.[13] Pyongyang confiscates up to 70-90% of workers’ earnings, often only paying workers upon returning home, further ensuring their dependence and obedience.[14] This revelation shattered the fragile illusion that obedience might lead to reward. The workers occupied the factory, barricaded the gates, and refused to return to work. This collective defiance stood out for its scale and the immense risk involved.[15]

          North Korean overseas workers live under constant surveillance, their passports confiscated upon arrival, housed in cramped dormitories with poor living conditions, enduring shifts up to 16 hours daily, with monitored conversations and banned phones.[16][17] Any sign of dissent leads to punishment, including forced repatriation to North Korea, where imprisonment or execution, along with retribution against one’s family, often follows.[18] Within this brutal context, the Helong protest became a rare and radical assertion of human agency.

          By late January, Chinese and North Korean authorities responded. North Korean officials rushed to Helong and paid several months of overdue wages to placate the workers, temporarily defusing the situation.[19] They then quietly dispersed the workers, relocated them to other sites, or returned them home; however, most of them faced consequences.[20] Half of them were forcibly repatriated to North Korea, likely sent to political prison camp; the others were placed under heightened surveillance.[21] This response mirrored a longstanding pattern of punishment; Pyongyang uses overseas labor not only to earn revenue but also to test their loyalty, as many of the workers come from families considered politically loyal.[22]  

          Chinese and North Korean authorities suppressed the Helong protest. Still, the incident remains essential for exposing the limits of control in even most repressive labor systems. Helong matters as it shows that even tightly controlled workers can resist. It also raises questions about how long Pyongyang can contain such defiance. This case compares to another labor movement where workers challenged a regime claiming to speak for them. That movement began in Poland when shipyard workers launched a strike that changed the country’s future.
 
Lessons from Gdańsk: When Labor Became a Movement
          In the summer of 1980, Polish workers at the Gdańsk Shipyard launched a strike that reshaped the Cold War era and redefined labor resistance under authoritarianism. What began as a local protest over price hikes and deteriorating living conditions quickly became one of postwar Europe’s most consequential social movements. At the center stood an electrician named Lech Wałęsa, who later became Poland’s President and received the Nobel Peace Prize.[23] His leadership helped transform a single workplace dispute into Solidarność (Solidarity), the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc.[24] Within a year, Solidarność grew into a nationwide force with nearly 10 million members, more than a quarter of Poland’s population at the time.[25]

          The movement did not function as an ordinary union. Solidarność became a civic movement that united workers, intellectuals, students, and clergy around a shared vision of rights, dignity, and political reform.[26] Members demanded more than wage increases or better working conditions; they called for freedom of speech, access to independent media, the release of political prisoners, and an end to censorship, demands that directly confronted the communist rule. The August 1980 Gdańsk Accords, signed after mass strikes, granted limited rights to strike and organize independently; that agreement marked a crack in the Iron Curtain, a breach the regime immediately tried to seal.[27]

          In December 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed martial law, banned Solidarność, and imprisoned thousands of activists.[28] Nevertheless, underground networks of union members and supporters continued to publish clandestine newspapers, organize covert meetings, and stage sporadic strikes. The Catholic Church offered protection and moral legitimacy, while Western governments and labor unions provided material and symbolic support.[29] Aid arrived through smuggled printing presses, shortwave radio broadcasts, and public campaigns led by foreign trade unionists.[30] These networks served as lifelines and deterred harsher repression by signaling global awareness and solidarity.

          Throughout the 1980s, Solidarność challenged the communist establishment with persistent resilience. This effort culminated in 1988 when renewed strikes and an economic crisis forced the regime to negotiate. The 1989 Round Table Talks produced an agreement to hold partially free elections, where Solidarność candidates won by a landslide.[31] By August, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, one of the movement’s advisors, assumed office as the first non-Communist Prime Minister in the Eastern Bloc, initiating Poland’s peaceful democratic transition.[32] Solidarność demonstrated that organized labor backed by broad civic coalitions could successfully confront entrenched authoritarian rule.

          Several factors allowed for this transformation. Firstly, the organization was crucial. Solidarność emerged from earlier dissident groups like the Committee for the Defence of Workers (KOR), which provided the intellectual and logistical groundwork for collective resistance.[33] Secondly, pluralism played a key role. Solidarność transcended class and ideology, uniting blue-collar workers, urban professionals, students, and clergy. Thirdly, effective communication sustained momentum. Underground publications, leaflets, and word-of-mouth kept members informed and connected despite martial law.[34] Lastly, international solidarity made a significant difference. Labor unions from Western countries, including the United States and France, contributed funding, training, advocacy platforms, and international visibility.[35] The Vatican also provided moral support, and Western media highlighted the movement’s struggles.[36]

          The Polish experience provides valuable insights. Authoritarian regimes often claim to act in the name of workers. However, when workers rise up, they expose the regime’s most profound contradictions. Solidarność revealed how labor activism, fused with broader demands for justice and freedom, can evolve into a powerful national movement capable of influencing history. It proved that authoritarianism can be vulnerable to collective resistance under the right conditions. North Korean workers have already demonstrated immense courage. The crucial question remains whether conditions permit that courage to grow into a similarly impactful movement inside North Korea.
 
What Connects (and Divides) These Stories
          At first glance, Polish shipyard strikers and North Korean workers in China appear to come from opposite ends of history. They operated under different regimes, faced different constraints, and emerged in dramatically different geopolitical contexts. Yet their acts of defiance, separated by over four decades and thousands of miles, reveal parallels.

          In both cases, groups of ordinary workers took significant personal risks to protest exploitation. It takes immense bravery for any group of laborers, whether shipbuilders in Gdańsk or factory workers in Helong, to collectively say “no.” In both movements, the youth and a sense of injustice played an important role. In Poland, young workers and students joined Solidarność alongside veteran laborers. Teenagers held hunger strikes, wore Solidarność badges, and debated politics in schoolyards.[37] These acts revealed how deeply the movement captured the imagination of a new generation. Similarly, many of the Helong protesters were young women in their twenties, reportedly former Korean People’s Army (KPA) soldiers dispatched abroad through a trading company under North Korea’s Ministry of Defense.[38] Despite their background, they may have been less influenced by regime propaganda than older generations.

          The diffusion of information played a key role in both cases. The Polish movement benefited from established underground communication channels. Activists spread their message through pamphlets, church sermons, and foreign media broadcasts, allowing the strike to inspire solidarity nationwide. In contrast, North Korean workers lacked independent networks, and news of Helong reached the outside world through South Korean intelligence and defector testimonies.[39] Yet even within these limits, information traveled. Researcher Cho Han-bum and former diplomat Ko Young-hwan publicized the Helong protest through interviews and online commentary,[40] and major outlets soon picked up their accounts. Moreover, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) confirmed “various incidents and accidents” involving North Korean workers, attributing them to poor labor conditions.[41] Although the NIS released few details, South Korean experts and former North Korean officials quickly amplified the story. The Helong protest sparked similar incidents among North Korean workers in other Chinese cities, including Dandong.[42] In Dandong, workers refused to return to their jobs and demanded to go home, citing long-term physical and emotional exhaustion. According to reports, some said they would rather die in North Korea than remain in China.[43] Although the Helong protest lacked the coordination and structure of Solidarność, it sparked visible unrest elsewhere, showing that even fragmented acts of resistance can carry influence beyond a single factory gate.

          The movements differed not only in scale but also in how they organized and sustained leadership. Solidarność became a formal movement with elected leaders and inter-factory coordination. Dissident advisers supported it, and the movement maintained solidified negotiation channels. The North Korean protests, however, were spontaneous and without a clear leader, and desperation rather than strategy drove them. In Helong, leadership emerged informally and remained anonymous. Authorities later identified around 200 individuals as “leaders” of the unrest and reportedly sent many to prison camps.[44] After the protest, officials increased ideological indoctrination sessions from weekly to daily, seeking to reassert control.[45] These mandatory sessions reinforce loyalty to Kim Jong-un and frame any dissent, even abroad, as betrayal. Workers must attend lectures, recite slogans, and submit written reflections affirming their ideological commitment each day.[46]

          These differing structures shaped each movement’s durability. Solidarność maintained pressure for nearly a decade and eventually helped lead Poland’s democratic transition. The Helong uprising lasted only a few days. Although some overdue wages were paid to ease tensions, authorities swiftly punished those held responsible. In Poland, the majority of leaders returned to public life by 1984.[47] The Helong protest exposed cracks in a system built to suppress dissent. Like the Gdańsk strikers who held their ground, Helong’s workers disrupted the illusion of total control. Their actions signaled to Pyongyang that even the most trusted laborers have limits that must be respected. Moreover, unlike Solidarność, which gained rapid international solidarity in the 1980s, the Helong workers count not receive public support from any foreign government. The global response remained limited to intelligence briefings and quiet diplomacy, likely to avoid worsening the risk to those involved. This silence further illustrates the isolation faced by North Korean workers.

          The severity of state reprisals also differed. While both regimes used crackdowns, North Korea responded more harshly. Martial law in Poland between 1981 and 1983 led to thousands of arrests but relatively few deaths; many of the prisoners later received amnesty.[48] North Korean authorities classify even non-violent strikes as acts of treason, and the Helong protesters likely understood that their actions could lead to execution or indefinite detention.

          North Korea’s system of collective punishment further magnifies these risks. Unlike in Poland, where repression often targeted individual activists, North Korean authorities apply yeon-jwa-je, also known as “guilt by association”.[49] Family members can face punishment for a relative’s perceived disloyalty. This hostage-like leverage discourages many from resisting, forcing them to consider not only their own safety but the fate of their loved ones back home. The regime’s use of collective punishment adds a uniquely cruel dimension to its repression. Workers often comply out of fear for their families and themselves. It stifles not just public voices but even the private thought of resistance.
 
The Role of International Society and What Comes Next
          The international response has not matched the scale of these abuses. No UN resolution or public statement has addressed the Helong protest, likely because China and North Korea concealed the incident, and verifying details remains difficult. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Chinese and Russian firms in 2020 for violating a UN resolution on overseas labor.[50] These efforts suggest growing concern but limited enforcement. In March 2024, Russia blocked the UN Panel of Experts’ renewal, thus severely diminishing sanctions compliance.[51] Without oversight, violations will likely rise further. Furthermore, in 2024, the UN Human Rights Office described North Korea’s labor export system as state-sponsored forced labor and a potential crime against humanity.[52]

          The legacy of Solidarność reminds us that solidarity must cross borders. Since North Korean workers cannot speak freely, others must continue to do so in their place. NGOs, embassies, and legal advocates must help build secure communication channels for workers in danger. Supporting these workers remains both a moral duty and a practical strategy to weaken North Korea’s forced labor economy.

Concluding remarks
          Poland’s Solidarność movement and the Helong strike, separated by over four decades and vastly different regimes, reveal the power and limits of labor resistance under authoritarian rule. Each began with a basic demand for dignity: Polish shipyard workers sought independent unions, and North Korean laborers demanded their earned wages. Both demands challenged regimes that claimed to defend workers while exploiting their labor. Solidarność succeeded by building leadership, underground networks, and securing international support. North Korean workers, by contrast, continue to lack protection, communication channels, and the freedom to organize. The Helong protest nevertheless reflected extraordinary courage under extreme risk. The international community has taken some steps, but its efforts remain insufficient.
​
          Solidarność offers both an inspiration and a warning. It models how organized labor, civic unity, and international backing can challenge repression, but also warns of the risks when a movement lacks sustained support or fractures under pressure.

          Grassroots defiance can help topple rigid regimes, but only with unity and outside support. The Helong strike reflected that same spirit in one of the harshest conditions imaginable. These workers risk retaliation against themselves and their families. Their resistance calls for an international response. Repression grows stronger when courage meets silence. Small acts of defiance can become lasting movements only if sustained legal, diplomatic, and material support follows.

Ada Trybuchowska is a recent graduate of the Master of Global Affairs program at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. She is currently a Research Intern at HRNK, contributing to analysis and communications on North Korean human rights. Her research interests include cybersecurity, human rights advocacy, and the politics of Central and Eastern Europe, with a particular emphasis on populism and digital policy.

[1] Eugene Whong, “100,000 North Koreans Work Abroad, Earning US$500 Million a Year: UN,” Radio Free Asia, March 21, 2024, https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/workers-03212024162926.html.  
[2] Ju-min Park, “Signs of Rare Unrest among North Korean Workers in China, Researchers Say,” Reuters, February 8, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/signs-rare-unrest-among-north-korean-workers-china-researchers-say-2024-02-08/.
[3] Seulkee Jang, “N. Korean Official’s Death in China Leads to Increased Ideological Reviews of Workers,” Daily NK, March 6, 2024, http://www.dailynk.com/english/north-korean-officials-death-china-leads-increased-ideological-reviews-workers/.
[4] Ju-min Park, “Signs of Rare Unrest among North Korean Workers in China, Researchers Say.”.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Tae-jun Kang, “Enraged N Korean Workers in China Beat Factory Manager to Death: Report,” Radio Free Asia, February 19, 2024, https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/nkorean-workers-kill-manager-02192024003047.html#:~:text=when%20the%20hostage%20management%20representative,to%20death%20by%20the%20workers.
[8] Ju-min Park, “Signs of Rare Unrest among North Korean Workers in China, Researchers Say.”
[9] Philippe Pons, “North Korean Workers Abroad, a Financial Windfall for the Pyongyang Regime,” Le Monde, March 30, 2025, https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/03/30/north-korean-workers-abroad-a-financial-windfall-for-the-pyongyang-regime_6739654_4.html.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Min Chao Choy, “Last Year, North Korean Workers Were Banned Abroad. But Some Still Didn’t Leave.,” NK News, December 21, 2020, https://www.nknews.org/2020/12/last-year-north-korean-workers-were-banned-abroad-but-some-still-didnt-leave/.
[12] Chad O’Carroll, “100K North Koreans Still Earning Money for Regime Overseas: UN Report,” NK News, March 21, 2024, https://www.nknews.org/2024/03/100k-north-koreans-still-earning-money-for-regime-overseas-un-report/.
[13] Ju-min Park, “Signs of Rare Unrest among North Korean Workers in China, Researchers Say.”
[14] U.S. Department of State, 2021 Trafficking in Persons Report: North Korea, July 1, 2021, https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-trafficking-in-persons-report/north-korea/.
[15] Park Chan-kyong, “Could Reports of a North Korean Workers’ Riot in China ‘Pose Threats’ to the Regime?,” South China Morning Post, January 31, 2024, https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3250287/could-reports-north-korean-workers-riot-china-pose-threats-regime.
[16] U.S. Department of State, 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: North Korea, March 20, 2023, https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/north-korea/.
[17] Greg Scarlatoiu, Raymond Ha, and Hyunseung Lee, North Korean Workers Officially Dispatched to China & Russia: Human Rights Denial, Chain of Command & Control (Washington, DC: Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2022), https://www.hrnk.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Overseas_Workers_0926.pdf.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Tae-jun Kang, “Enraged N Korean Workers in China Beat Factory Manager to Death: Report.”
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Park Chan-kyong, “Could Reports of a North Korean Workers’ Riot in China ‘Pose Threats’ to the Regime?.”
[23] Gdańsk - The Gdańsk Shipyard, the Birthplace of Solidarity,” Zabytek, accessed May 3, 2025, https://zabytek.pl/en/obiekty/gdansk-stocznia-gdanska-miejsce-narodzin-solidarnosci.
[24] Maciej Bartkowski, “Poland’s Solidarity Movement (1980-1989),” International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, December 2009, https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/polands-solidarity-movement-1980-1989/.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Mikołaj Gliński, “The Solidarity Movement: Anti-Communist, Or Most Communist Thing Ever?,” Culture, August 9, 2016, https://culture.pl/en/article/the-solidarity-movement-anti-communist-or-most-communist-thing-ever.
[27] Sebastian Ligarski, “Not Just Gdańsk. the August 1980 Accords,” Polish History, accessed May 3, 2025, https://polishhistory.pl/not-just-gdansk-the-august-1980-accords/.
[28] Wojciech Polak, “Different Faces of Martial Law,” Polonia Institute, June 17, 2024, https://poloniainstitute.net/current-events/different-faces-of-martial-law/.
[29] Rafał Łatka: Kościół Katolicki a Solidarność (1980–1981),” Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, April 15, 2024, https://ipn.gov.pl/pl/historia-z-ipn/archiwum/162937%2CRafal-Latka-Kosciol-katolicki-a-Solidarnosc-19801981.html#:~:text=Wpływ%20na%20etos%20.
[30] Tomasz Kozłowski, “Solidarity: A Trade Union as a Cold War Actor (1980–1993),” in The Palgrave Handbook of Non-State Actors in East-West Relations, ed. Péter Marton, Gitte Thomasen, Csaba Békés, and András Rácz (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05750-2_57-1, p. 3-4.
[31] Ibid., p. 10.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Colin Barker, “The Rise of Solidarnosc,” International Socialism, October 17, 2005, https://isj.org.uk/the-rise-of-solidarnosc/.
[34] Evans, Kristi S. “The Argument of Images: Historical Representation in Solidarity Underground Postage, 1981-87.” American Ethnologist 19, no. 4 (1992): 749–67. http://www.jstor.org/stable/644917.
[35] Arch Puddington, “Surviving the Underground,” American Educator, 2005, https://www.aft.org/ae/summer2005/puddington.
[36] Maciej Bartkowski, “Poland’s Solidarity Movement (1980-1989).”
[37] Kristi S. Evans, “The Argument of Images: Historical Representation in Solidarity Underground Postage, 1981–87.”
[38] Tae-jun Kang, “Enraged N Korean Workers in China Beat Factory Manager to Death: Report.”
[39] Ju-min Park, “Signs of Rare Unrest among North Korean Workers in China, Researchers Say.”
[40] Ibid.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Kim Soo-yeon, “N. Korean Workers Refuse to Go to Work in Dandong: Seoul Expert,” Yonhap, February 29, 2024, https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20240229008500315.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Tae-jun Kang, “Enraged N Korean Workers in China Beat Factory Manager to Death: Report.”.
[45] Seulkee Jang, “N. Korean Official’s Death in China Leads to Increased Ideological Reviews of Workers.”
[46] Ibid.
[47] Maciej Bartkowski, “Poland’s Solidarity Movement (1980-1989).”
[48] Benedek Pál, “‘All the Telephone and Telex Lines Are Disconnected’ – RFE and the 1981 Martial Law in Poland,” Blinken OSA Archivum, December 13, 2021, https://www.archivum.org/entries/blog/all-the-telephone-and-telex-lines-are-disconnected---rfe-and-the-1981-martial-law-in-poland.
[49] David Hawk, The Hidden Gulag: The Lives and Voices of “Those Who Are Sent to the Mountains”, 2nd ed.,Washington, DC: Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2012, https://www.hrnk.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/publications/eng/HRNK_HiddenGulag2_Web_5-18.pdf, p. 29.
[50] Mathew Ha, “Treasury Sanctions Companies Exporting North Korean Labor to Russia,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies, November 23, 2020, https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2020/11/23/treasury-sanctions-north-korean-labor-russia/.
[51] Edith M. Lederer, “Russian Veto Brings an End to the UN Panel That Monitors North Korea Nuclear Sanctions,” AP News, March 28, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/un-us-north-korea-russia-sanctions-monitoring-72f8cbac116dea7c795d9a3357fc45f3.
[52] Tae-jun Kang, “Enraged N Korean Workers in China Beat Factory Manager to Death: Report.”.