DAC Group

Summary of Crimes & Concerns

  • * North Korean Labor

Bait-to-Plate Profile

Correspondence

February 7, 2024
1 inquiry
0 replies

Email sent to the contact address for DAC Group.

The email said: "We’re contacting you in light of our latest investigation which concerns the use of forced labor in China’s seafood processing industry, specifically North Korean workers in Chinese plants.

We have investigators on the ground in China who have been engaging with labor brokers directly involved with the transfer of North Korean workers to factories in China. Through this and other investigative means, including collecting online footage from the plants and interviews with workers recently returned to North Korea from China, we’ve found large numbers of North Korean workers at a range of seafood processing plants in Liaoning province, on China’s border with North Korea, as recently as 2023. Two of these plants are called Donggang Jinhui and Dalian Haiqing.

The use of overseas North Korean workers was prohibited by the United Nations Security Council in 2017, with Resolution 2397 setting a deadline of December 2019 for the repatriation of all such workers to North Korea. Under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), passed in 2017, the United States prohibits the import of any goods produced by North Korean nationals unless clear and convincing evidence is provided that indicates the materials were not made with forced labor.

According to trade records, DAC Group imported two shipments of seafood from Donggang Jinhui in 2023, and several shipments of seafood from Dalian Haiqing in 2022.

While we understand that you may not be aware of the above issues, we want to ask if DAC Group has any comment to make in response to this email?"

Future correspondence will be added here as this conversation continues.