UN deadline to send North Korean workers home likely unmet

North Korea stands to lose a rare legitimate source of foreign currency, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, if nations that employ its people as guest workers abide by a U.N. order to send them all home by this weekend.

Sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council in December 2017 after North Korea tested a long-range missile required member states to repatriate all North Korean workers from their territories within 24 months, a deadline that arrives Sunday.

There are no U.N. penalties for not following through, however, and it appears unlikely that there will be a mass exodus of the thousands of workers still believed employed in places like China and Russia.

In this Dec. 5, 2019, photo, North Korean female workers look out of windows as the bus carrying them crosses the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge from North Korea's Sinuiju to China's Dandong. A U.N.-set deadline for member states to repatriate all North Korean workers on their soils falls on Sunday, Dec. 22. The estimate for the number of North Koreans working in China has been as high as 50,000 to 80,000, with the vast majority working in factories the country's northeast along the long border with North Korea. China hosts the most North Korean workers. (Kyodo News via AP)

But if even half of North Korean workers were sent back home, North Korea would still suffer financially, said analyst Oh Gyeong-seob at Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification.

THE NUMBERS

In China, Russia and elsewhere, there is strong demand for cheap North Korean workers.

FILE - In this Sept. 4, 2017, file photo, workers at a seafood processing plant where North Korean workers are distinguished from the Chinese workers by blue overalls, wash up after work in the city of Hunchun, in northeastern China's Jilin province. A U.N.-set deadline for member states to repatriate all North Korean workers on their soils falls on Sunday, Dec. 22, 2019. The estimate for the number of North Koreans working in China has been as high as 50,000 to 80,000, with the vast majority working in factories the country's northeast along the long border with North Korea. China hosts the most North Korean workers. (AP PhotoNg Han Guan, File)

The U.S. State Department previously estimated there were about 100,000 North Korean workers worldwide, and civilian experts said those workers brought North Korea an estimated $200 million to $500 million in revenue a year.

North Korean workers abroad are under the constant surveillance of their country's security agents, toil more than 12 hours a day and take home only a fraction of their salaries, with the rest going to their government. Human rights organizations have called them modern-day slaves, but their jobs are highly coveted in North Korea.

According to interim reports that member states submitted to the U.N., 23,245 North Korean workers have so far been repatriated. But those figures don’t include China, which hasn't publicized its own report, or a dozen other countries that have yet to submit their reports and are believed to have employed North Koreans.

This Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2019, photo shows the building of the North Korean Embassy in Moscow, Russia. A U.N.-set deadline for member states to repatriate all North Korean workers on their soils falls on Sunday, Dec. 22. The interim U.N. reports show that about 80 percent of the North Koreans repatriated worldwide were from Russia, where most were employed in the construction, forestry and logging industries. (AP PhotoPavel Golovkin)

CHINA

The estimate for the number of North Koreans working in China has been as high as 50,000 to 80,000, with the vast majority working in factories the country's northeast along the long border with North Korea. China hosts the most North Korean workers.

Lim Soo-ho, a sanctions expert at Seoul’s Institute for National Security Strategy, said Beijing would find it difficult to persuade local governments in the region to send those workers home as their small special economic zones mainly rely on North Korean labor.

In this Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2019, photo, a man walks past an entrance of the North Korean restaurant Kope in Moscow, Russia. A U.N.-set deadline for member states to repatriate all North Korean workers on their soils falls on Sunday, Dec. 22. The interim U.N. reports show that about 80 percent of the North Koreans repatriated worldwide were from Russia, where most were employed in the construction, forestry and logging industries. (AP PhotoPavel Golovkin)

Lim said he has seen no signs that the number of North Korean workers in northeastern China was decreasing.

Kim Donggil, a Korea expert at Beijing’s Peking University, said China would be lax in enforcing repatriation.

Staff at North Korean restaurants in Beijing shut their doors and hung up phones when asked about whether they would be sending North Korean employees back home.

FILE - In this Sept. 30, 2017, file photo, North Korean workers gather after lunch at the Hong Chao Zhi Yi garment factory in Hunchun, in northeastern China's Jilin province. A U.N.-set deadline for member states to repatriate all North Korean workers on their soils falls on Sunday, Dec. 22, 2019. The estimate for the number of North Koreans working in China has been as high as 50,000 to 80,000, with the vast majority working in factories the country's northeast along the long border with North Korea. China hosts the most North Korean workers. (AP PhotoNg Han Guan, File)

RUSSIA

The interim U.N. reports show that about 80 percent of the North Koreans repatriated worldwide were from Russia, where most were employed in the construction, forestry and logging industries.

A Russian interim report said the number of North Koreans with valid work permits in the country decreased to 11,490 in late 2018 from 30,023 a year earlier. Public records show the Labor Ministry hasn’t issued a single work authorization for North Korean workers this year.

FILE - In this Sept. 2, 2017, file photo, North Korean workers from the Hong Chao Zhi Yi garment factory gather for a head count after shopping at a street market in the city of Hunchun in northeastern China's Jilin province. The estimate for the number of North Koreans working in China has been as high as 50,000 to 80,000, with the vast majority working in factories the country's northeast along the long border with North Korea. China hosts the most North Korean workers. (AP PhotoNg Han Guan, File)

There are signs that more North Korean workers are preparing to return home.

North Korea’s national airliner, Air Koryo, temporarily increased the number of flights from Vladivostok to Pyongyang in the second half of December, while train tickets this month from the Russian city of Ussuriysk to Pyongyang have already sold out, according to Russian data.

One company, the Yenisei construction company based in Krasnoyarsk in eastern Siberia, said they no longer employ any North Korean workers and are in fact going out of business.

FILE - In this Sept. 4, 2017, file photo, portraits of late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are hung on the walls in rooms of a dormitory for workers with the seafood processing factory Hunchun Pagoda, in the city of Hunchun in northeastern China's Jilin province. The workers wake up each morning on metal bunk beds in fluorescent-lit Chinese dormitories, North Koreans outsourced by their government to process seafood that ends up in American stores and homes. Privacy is forbidden. They cannot leave their compounds without permission. (AP PhotoNg Han Guan)

“North Korean workers were good for us from many aspects — soft power, economics, political influence," Russia's ambassador to North Korea, Alexander Matsegora, said in a recent interview with the Vladivostok radio. "Now we are going to lose all that.”

ELSEWHERE

The United Arab Emirates repatriated 823 North Korean workers, more than half of the North Koreans who were earning income in the country, as of December 2017, according to an interim report by the country in March.

Qatar told the U.N. in March that there were only 70 North Koreans working in the country, down from about 2,500 in January 2016. Most of the North Koreans had been working in construction, though Qatar has said none of them had ever worked on construction sites related to the 2022 World Cup.

Kuwait, which once had thousands of North Korean laborers, said it has sent back more than half of them.

Vietnam said in June that it repatriated 51 North Korean workers. Singapore said in March that it revoked the work permits of all North Korean nationals and had not granted new ones.

Experts say North Korea has also sent workers to at least 13 African nations, including Uganda, Angola, Ethiopia, Senegal, South Africa and Equatorial Guinea. Only Equatorial Guinea has filed an interim U.N. report, though it didn’t give a say how many North Koreans had been repatriated.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The folksy wisdom and jokes that were a staple of the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting for decades when Warren Buffett was leading the show will be missing Saturday, but shareholders still started lining up at midnight outside a Nebraska arena to listen to new CEO Greg Abel.

Attendance is down significantly this year with the arena only a little over half full as the meeting started. That’s much different from the past few years when more than 40,000 attended to listen to the 95-year-old Buffett and — before his death in 2023, Buffett’s longtime partner Charlie Munger was always part of the fun. Buffett gave up the CEO title in January, but he remains chairman and will be sitting with the rest of the Berkshire board on the floor to listen at the meeting.

Saturday’s meeting began with a video tribute to Buffett filled with clips from the previous 60 years of annual meetings. The first clip showed the standing ovation Buffett received last year after he surprised shareholders by announcing that he would step down.

Abel then announced the symbolic move of retiring jerseys with Buffett’s and Munger’s names on them that will hang in the rafters of the arena.

Abel has been on stage next to the legendary investor at the annual meetings for several years, but this year is his first time running the show. Investors expect the conversation to focus more on how the dozens of companies Berkshire owns are doing. The conglomerate owns major insurers like Geico, several major utilities like Pacificorp, BNSF railroad and an assortment of manufacturers, retail and service businesses.

Signs of the transition are peppered throughout the 200,000-square-foot exhibit hall where shareholders buy products from Berkshire companies. A caricature of Abel playing his favorite sport of hockey is front and center on commemorative boxes of See’s Candy with Buffett and Mrs. See in the background in hockey gear. At the Pilot Travel Center booth pictures of Abel and Buffett are plastered on the windshield of a semitrailer truck, but Abel is in the driver’s seat. And this year Jazwares created a Squishmallow version of Abel to go with the latest versions of Buffett and his longtime partner Charlie Munger as stuffed dolls that shareholders lined up to buy.

“Sadly we miss Warren and Charlie and that show which was fun, but it’s a business meeting for a lot of us and hearing what the businesses are doing is what it’s all about,” investor Chris Bloomstran, who is president of Semper Augustus Investments Group said.

But also many people travel to Omaha primarily to meet up with like-minded value investors, who practice the approach that Buffett employed, and attend some of the investment conferences and meetings that are scheduled around Berkshire’s shareholder meeting.

“That’s why I’m really here, really here is to network with other people,” said Bob Robotti, who runs his own investment company. He doesn’t expect surprises from Abel and the other Berkshire executives at the meeting. “They shouldn’t say anything that would be shocking and surprising because they’re consistent with what they do.”

Many investors are watching closely for any changes Abel might make, but there’s not a lot of reason expect anything big. After all, Abel has been with Berkshire for more than 25 years, and he had already been managing all of the conglomerate’s noninsurance businesses for nearly eight years by the time he was promoted.

Abel did make a few administrative changes to establish a team to help support him, but he has promised to maintain Berkshire’s culture that allows the CEOs of all of its businesses to largely run their day-to-day operations while consulting with headquarters on any major investments and sending any extra cash to Omaha.

The CEOs of Dairy Queen, See’s Candy, Jazwares and Brooks Running all said very little has changed since Abel was promoted other than they now report to NetJets CEO Adam Johnson who is overseeing 32 retail and service businesses.

“I think this is a very deeply rooted culture that Warren has created, and I believe the transition to Greg is going to be rooted in those values that Warren has for 60 years instituted and will continue,” Brooks CEO Dan Sheridan said.

For years Buffett always said he was having too much fun running Berkshire to ever retire, but once the shock of his announcement in the final minutes of last years meeting wore off the company’s executives quickly agreed this plan for the transition was better so Buffett can still be around to advise Abel.

“Berkshire is as strong today as it’s ever been and Warren is still part of it,” DQ CEO Troy Bader said as his staff sold Dilly Bars to shareholders. “Warren is still present. So that’s the greatest combination right now, to be able to have that transition in leadership where Greg and Warren can still work together.”

Abel is known to be a more demanding and hands-on boss than Buffett ever was, but he does that by challenging Berkshire’s CEOs to strengthen their competitive advantages while taking care of their customers. Abel asks tough questions and offers advice that his CEOs appreciate, but he doesn’t tell them exactly what to do.

And with Buffett remaining Berkshire’s chairman and its largest shareholder it’s unlikely that Abel will make any drastic changes. So shareholders shouldn’t expect Berkshire to start paying a dividend or that Abel will suddenly split the company up. Instead, Abel will continue building on the foundation Buffett established over 60 years.

Robotti said the performance of Berkshire’s businesses should be much more important to shareholders than the entertainment value of the annual meetings.

“My hope and expectation are they’re picking people who have competency in running a business and not necessarily public speakers and presenters,” Robotti said.

Berkshire said Saturday morning that its profits more than doubled in the first-quarter to $10.1 billion, or $7,027 per Class A share, as the value of its investments grew and most of its businesses improved.

The paper value of Berkshire’s investments always has a major impact on its bottom line, and it did record a $5.8 billion gain on the stocks it did sell. The value of the portfolio did slip to just over $288 billion.

Berkshire’s massive cash pile continues to grow, and it hit $397.4 billion at the end of the first quarter.

Most of Berkshire’s varied businesses reported better operating earnings this year. The insurance unit that includes Geico and a number of other companies reported an underwriting profit of $1.7 billion, up from $1.34 billion last year. Profits also grew somewhat at BNSF railroad and Berkshire’s utility and manufacturing companies.

Author and former Omaha World-Herald reporter Steve Jordan signs copies of his book at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders event on Friday, May 1, 2026 in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Josh Funk)

A Berkshire Hathaway shareholder takes a selfie in front of a Pilot truck stops semi truck with pictures of Berkshire's top two executives behind the wheel: new CEO Greg Abel and Chairman Warren Buffett on Friday, May 1, 2026 in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Josh Funk)

Berkshire Hathaway shareholders stand in line to purchase Squishmallows versions of the company's top executives: CEO Greg Abel, Chairman Warren Buffett and former Vice Chairman Charlie Munger on Friday, May 1, 2026 in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Josh Funk)

Berkshire Hathaway shareholders line up to buy products at the Pampered Chef booth behind a cutout of longtime CEO Warren Buffett who stepped down in January on Friday, May 1, 2026 in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Josh Funk)

Shareholders line up to take pictures with depictions of Berkshire Hathaway's new CEO Greg Abel and Chairman Warren Buffett on Friday, May 1, 2026 in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Josh Funk)