North Korea and Russia have signed a protocol on the dispatch of each other’s laborers.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said that Vice Economic Minister Ri Kwang-gun and Dmitri Demidenko, deputy general director at the emigration affairs general bureau of Russia's interior ministry signed the deal on Friday in Pyongyang during a seventh round of working-level talks.

KCNA did not disclose details of the deal or the talks.

A number of North Koreans are believed to be working overseas, mainly in Russia and China.

About 30-thousand North Koreans are reportedly working in construction and forestry in the Russian Far East, Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

North Korea and Russia concluded the treaty on mutual dispatch of laborers in August 2007 and have held working-level talks intermittently to implement it.

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