SEOUL, South Korea — When the North Korean carpenter was offered a job in Kuwait in 1996, he leapt at the chance.
He was promised $120 a month, an unimaginable wage for most workers in his famine-stricken country. The opportunity to work overseas, in a country where most people are not allowed to travel abroad, was a rare privilege.
But for Rim Il, the deal soured from the start: Under a moonlit night, the bus carrying him and a score of other fresh arrivals pulled into a desert camp cordoned off with barbed wire fences.
There, 1,800 contract workers, sent by North Korea to earn badly needed hard currency, were living together under the watchful eyes of government supervisors, Mr. Rim said. They worked from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week, doing menial jobs at construction sites."
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