TB cases among North Korean overseas workers put Chinese factories on alert

Multiple North Korean workers recently deployed to factories in northeastern China have tested positive for tuberculosis, raising serious doubts about the reliability of pre-departure health screenings conducted inside North Korea.

A Daily NK source said on Wednesday that approximately 35,000 North Korean workers entered China between early this year and the end of last month. The workers were assigned primarily to garment processing factories, food production facilities, and seafood processing plants across Liaoning and Jilin provinces, two of the main destinations for North Korean overseas labor deployments.

Early this month, three North Korean workers at a garment factory in Liaoning province tested positive for pulmonary tuberculosis and were repatriated to North Korea. The workers had been in China for less than a month before developing symptoms including fever and persistent cough. Local hospital testing confirmed the tuberculosis diagnosis.

The factory employed around 300 North Korean workers at the time of the outbreak. After the cases were identified, other Chinese factories employing North Korean workers conducted emergency health checks. At least one additional factory identified five more tuberculosis cases. Those workers were immediately isolated from their coworkers and returned to North Korea within days.

Pulmonary tuberculosis is a highly infectious airborne disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It spreads through respiratory droplets, making it particularly dangerous in environments where large numbers of people live and work in close proximity.

The source said the North Korean workers had officially undergone health screenings, including tuberculosis checks, before leaving North Korea. However, the source added that the screenings were likely conducted poorly or not at all. “There is a strong possibility that the health check was carried out only as a formality, or that the accuracy of testing was significantly lower than required,” the source said.

Standard diagnosis of active pulmonary tuberculosis requires chest X-rays and sputum tests. Given the state of North Korea’s healthcare infrastructure, there is concern that these procedures were either not properly administered or that the equipment used was inadequate.

Factories employing North Korean workers have grown visibly anxious. North Korean workers typically live in dormitories, and the communal living arrangements create conditions conducive to the rapid spread of airborne disease. Chinese managers and staff at the affected facilities have begun wearing masks inside factory premises as a precaution.

Despite the tuberculosis outbreak, the flow of North Korean workers into China has continued uninterrupted. Sources say large buses carrying North Korean workers have been crossing from Sinuiju, in North Pyongan province, into Dandong, in Liaoning province, at a rate of dozens of buses per day in recent weeks.

North Korea resumed sending overseas workers to China in significant numbers following the lifting of pandemic-era border restrictions in 2023. The overseas labor program is a major source of foreign currency earnings for the North Korean government and operates under close state supervision, with workers’ wages largely remitted directly to Pyongyang rather than to the workers themselves.

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