Correspondence
Email sent to the contact address for Rhee Bros. January 17, 2023: A letter with the same text as the email dated January 10 was sent by certified mail.
The email described abuses on a jigger owned by Rongcheng Wangdao, including the death of one crew member and disembarkation of a second for medical care after mistreatment on board, and multiple indicators of forced labor among the ship’s crew. It then traced squid from that vessel to the Chishan Group processor Shandong Haidu, which supplies squid products to Rhee Bros. The email also noted Chishan ships had been observed fishing in North Korean waters in violation of UN sanctions. It asked if the company had any comment in light of the information discovered in The Outlaw Ocean Project investigation.
Email sent to Rhee Bros, saying that Rhee's supplier Rizhao Meijia Aquatic Foodstuff Co. Ltd. is a Meijia Group company. The Meijia Group and another of Rhee's suppliers, Shandong Haidu, have received persons from the Xinjiang region of China under a state-imposed transfer program. The United Nations, human rights organizations and academic experts agree that since 2018, the Chinese government has systematically subjected Xinjiang’s predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities to forced labor across the country via state-sanctioned employment schemes which use coercive methods in worker enrollment, and obstruct freedom to leave employment. The U.S. has prohibited the importation of goods produced from state-imposed forced labor. The email asked for comment.
Email sent to two contact addresses for Rhee Bros, saying: "We previously emailed Rhee Bros on January 17, 2023, and June 15, 2023, regarding our investigation into China’s squid fishing fleet and the use of forced labor in China’s seafood processing industry. Since then, our ongoing investigation has made further findings which we want to bring to your attention. 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 Dandong city, close to China’s border with North Korea. As part of this work, we have information that as recently as December 2023, there were 50-70 workers at Dandong Galicia Seafood Co. Ltd. in Dandong.
According to trade records, Rhee Bros was the consignee for shipments of seafood, including pollock and cod, from Dandong Galicia between September 2017 and January 2023. The use of North Korean workers was prohibited by the United Nations Security Council in 2017, with Resolution 2397. Furthermore, 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. Like the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which pertains to Xinjiang labor, CAATSA has a "rebuttable presumption" whereby all North Korean workers are presumed to be state-sponsored forced labor.
As a result, we have several questions: 1) While we understand that you may not be aware of the above issues, we want to ask if Rhee Bros has any comment about this information that we are presenting? 2) Can you please itemize for us, which of your customers receive seafood tied to Dandong Galicia? 3) Has Rhee Bros conducted any social audits at this plant and if so what type, when, with what result, and were these audits unannounced? 4) If audits were indeed conducted at this plant, what - if any - language or process was included in those audits specifically to identify the presence of North Korean workers?"