"Workers recalled as North Korea prepares for war"

"A mass exodus of North Korean workers from the Far East of Russia is under way...

As the two Koreas edged towards the brink of war this week, it appears that the workers in Russia have been called back to aid potential military operations.

...North Korean workers had left the town of Nakhodka en masse shortly after the escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula earlier this week. "Traders have left the kiosks and markets, workers have abandoned building sites, and North Korean secret service employees working in the region have joined them and left,"...

..."North Korea's government sends thousands of its citizens to Russia to earn money, most of which is funnelled through government accounts," says Simon Ostrovsky, a journalist who discovered secret North Korean logging camps in the northern Siberian taiga. "Workers are often sent to remote locations for years at a time to work long hours and get as little as three days off per year." Now it appears that some kind of centralised order has been given for the workers to return home.

Russia's Pacific port of Vladivostok is thousands of miles and seven time zones from Moscow, but only around 100 miles from the country's heavily controlled border with North Korea. ...There are even two North Korean restaurants in the city. It is not known how many of the workers in other Russian towns have been called back to their homeland this week, or whether the exodus is permanent or temporary."

Shaun Walker