“Wake up before 6 a.m. to the Russian winter. Walk to the construction site as a group. Work from 7 a.m. until 10, 11 p.m., sometimes even midnight. Without breaks. There is no set end time. You finish when the target is met. Rain, snow, it does not matter. We worked with no gloves, no heating, no protective equipment. My hands cracked so badly I could not grip the tools. But you do not stop.”

This was the reality for “RT,” identified by his initials to protect his identity, a former reported victim of North Korea’s overseas forced labor, who described his experience to Fox News Digital. 

The man was one of the 100,000 workers sent overseas under North Korea’s state-sponsored labor program.

AS WAR LOSSES NEAR 2 MILLION, RUSSIA ACCUSED OF TRAFFICKING FOREIGN RECRUITS FROM AFRICA, ASIA

“I was told I could earn money,” he claimed to Fox News Digital. “That was all. Nobody mentioned a quota. Nobody told me that most of what I earn would be taken. I thought if I went to Russia and worked hard, I could save enough to build a better life for my family. When I arrived, I realized none of that was true. The money was not mine. It was never going to be mine.”

A new report published by the international human rights organization Global Rights Compliance shares firsthand testimonies from North Koreans working in Russia.

The report found that Russian companies are employing North Korean workers in violation of United Nations sanctions, often obscuring their identities so laborers do not even know who they are working for. U.N. Security Council resolutions require member states to repatriate North Korean workers, making their continued presence in Russia a potential breach of international sanctions.

The findings offer one of the clearest pictures yet of how North Korea is allegedly sustaining its regime under sanctions: exporting its citizens as labor, extracting their wages, and maintaining total control even beyond its borders.

Global Rights Compliance North Korea advisor Yeji Kim told Fox News Digital, “Every North Korean worker deployed abroad must pay a mandatory monthly sum to the state, known as the gukga gyehoekbun. As one worker told us, it must be paid ‘no matter what, dead or alive.’”

A typical worker earns roughly $800 a month for up to 420 hours of labor. From that, between $600 and $850 is deducted for the quota, along with additional payments for travel debt and communal living expenses, Kim said. 

What remains is approximately $10. If workers fall short, the deficit carries forward, leaving some in debt for an entire year, according to Kim. 

One worker described the quota as a “lump on his back” that dictated every aspect of his life abroad.

SHE HELPED NORTH KOREA INFILTRATE AMERICAN TECH COMPANIES

“Every month you must pay,” RT claimed. “There is no negotiation. If you fall short, the debt carries forward to the next month. We were told, ‘The quota must be met by any means necessary, even if it meant paying out of their own pocket.’ You came to earn and you leave with nothing. And if you fail too many times, they send you home. Home does not mean relief. It means blacklisting, interrogation, and sometimes your family paying the price.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and North Korea’s mission to the United Nations for comment and did not receive a response in time for publication.

The report identified what it said are all 11 International Labour Organization indicators of forced labor across 21 testimonies from workers in three Russian cities who did not know each other. These include debt bondage, restriction of movement, withholding of wages, excessive overtime, physical violence, surveillance, deception, isolation, abuse of vulnerability and abusive conditions.

Upon arrival in Russia, passports are immediately confiscated and retained by North Korean security officials, according to the report. 

NORTH KOREA EXECUTED TEENS FOR LISTENING TO K-POP, WATCHING ‘SQUID GAME’: REPORT

“My passport was taken the day I arrived,” RT said. “I never held it again. I could not leave the worksite freely. The city was right there, beyond the fence, but we were sealed off from it. A few times a year, we were allowed out, but only in groups, heads counted, with a fixed time to return.”

Physical violence was reported in several cases, including one instance in which a worker was beaten so severely he could not work for two weeks. Surveillance onsite was described as constant, with collective punishment used to force workers to monitor one another.

Workers described living in overcrowded containers infested with cockroaches and bedbugs, with access to only one or two showers per year and in some cases just a single day off annually. 

One worker told investigators they were forced to “lead lives worse than cattle.”

When asked how central the program is to North Korea’s economy, Kim said: “The U.N. Panel of Experts estimates approximately $500 million annually from the labor program alone. For a country under the most comprehensive sanctions regime in U.N. history, that is a critical revenue stream. It sustains the political elite, funds internal patronage networks and underwrites military ambitions, including nuclear development.”

The findings come as North Korea also is reported to have supplied weapons and troops worth as much as $14 billion to support Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The report’s authors warn that host countries play a critical role in enabling the system by allowing it to operate within their borders.

The people who made it into the report are among the few who managed to escape the system. RT said he now feels an obligation to speak out.

“We are people just like you but working like a cow,” he said. We have families. We left home because we wanted to give our children something better, and what we found was a system that took everything from us.”

He said thousands remain trapped.

“I want people to know that right now, today, there are men on construction sites in Russia working 16 hours a day, sleeping in containers, earning nothing, with no way to call home and no way to leave. Their names are not in any report. Nobody knows they are there. But they are there. And if I could say one thing to them, it would be — the world is starting to listen. Please hold on.”

For the first time in more than two decades, the Illinois men’s basketball team will still be dancing when the Final Four tips off.

Iowa’s underdog run in the NCAA Tournament ended Saturday with a 71-59 loss to a dominant Illinois team. Before Illinois could cut down the nets at Houston’s Toyota Center, a buzzer malfunction caused a loud, roughly 10-minute delay.

The buzzer initially sounded signaling the end of a media timeout with just under eight minutes remaining in the first half. The horn continued blaring for about another seven minutes.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

Players stood on the court ready to play for a couple of minutes before both teams started to warm up as the buzzer continued to sound.

It was finally silenced, to cheers from the crowd, but then the main scoreboard and video screen that hangs over the middle of the court went dark.

The game ultimately resumed with the big scoreboard still off. Two smaller scoreboards at each end of the arena were working.

Freshman guard Keaton Wagler scored 25 points to help secure Illinois’ first Final Four berth since 2005.

This will be the sixth overall trip to the Final Four for Illinois, which has never won a national title. The Fighting Illini will face either Duke or UConn next week in Indianapolis.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.

Outspoken ESPN star Stephen A. Smith took a clear position in the ongoing debate about transgender athletes’ participation in girls and women’s sports.

“Biological men should not be competing against biological girls in sports, period,” Smith said during an appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher” after the Olympics’ policy on transgender women was mentioned.

“What about protecting the young ladies? Young ladies going up against biological men — biological men — there is no excuse for that.”

CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

Smith then mentioned former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas.

OLYMPIANS REACT TO THE IOC’S POLICY CHANGE TO PROTECT WOMEN’S SPORTS

“Lia Thomas, for example, was a male, and he was ranked over 400th in the world. … And then he became a she. … And No. 1. Well … does it really take an Einstein to realize that there’s something wrong with that picture?”

Smith has previously spoken about his views on transgender athletes in girls and women’s sports, including during a February 2025 Radio Row interview ahead of that year’s Super Bowl.

“So, that’s how I look at it. LGBTQ rights and all that stuff, I’m in full support of that, but when transgender athletes — men — are transitioning to women and they’re competing in female sports, that’s a different animal to me,” he said.

“That’s not just about LGBTQ rights. That’s about preying on the rights of females out there everywhere who were born female, and they’re at a decided disadvantage.”

Those comments from Smith surfaced around the same time in 2025 when President Donald Trump signed the “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order, which directed federal agencies to interpret Title IX based on biological sex at birth.

The NCAA complied with Trump’s executive order and changed its policy.

Fox News’ Ryan Gaydos contributed to this report.

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.