A report provided by an adviser to unification minister Kim Yung-ho claimed that thousands of North Korean laborers in China's northeastern Jilin Province staged a series of strikes and riots in protest of the North's delayed wage payment.

Citing a report obtained by defector-turned-ministerial inter-Korean affairs adviser Ko Young-hwan on Friday, Japan's Sankei Shimbun said the North had diverted wages to be paid by China to "war preparations" after bilateral exchanges were suspended amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Upon learning about the diversion after two-way exchanges resumed last year, the laborers refused to work around January 11, with the strikes expanding among clothing production and fisheries subcontractor plants in Jilin Province.

The Sankei said it is the first time that such large-scale protests and riots among North Korean workers overseas has been confirmed.

While such group actions began to subside around Monday after Pyongyang agreed to immediately pay overdue wages, the report forecast that they could resume in light of a depletion of funds.

Although the deployment of North Korean workers overseas is a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions, around 90-thousand are estimated to have remained in China, Russia, the Middle East and Africa amid pandemic border lockdowns.

[Photo : YONHAP News]