SEOUL — For more than three decades, North Korea ​has sent workers abroad to make money for its regime.

These workers have toiled in logging camps in Russia, factories and restaurants in China and farms and shipyards in Eastern Europe. They have sweated in construction sites in the Middle East and worked as doctors in African hospitals.

They left their children or parents behind as hostages, their passports confiscated for fear that they may flee to South Korea

Under the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, the number of workers sent abroad to raise money for the regime increased to tens of thousands, making billions of dollars a year, according to South Korean estimates. A United Nations Security Council resolution required countries to expel ​​the workers by the end of 2019.

But thousands still remain in China and Russia, according to​ former workers and a new report on North Korean human rights published by the South’s Unification Ministry over the weekend. With borders closed during the pandemic, many have been trapped, with no choice but to continue toiling away for their government.

China and Russia, which have sought to make the North a more useful partner in their rivalry with the United States, have become loopholes in enforcing the U.N. ban, helping the North earn badly needed cash as it deals with the fallout of international sanctions and the pandemic.

On Thursday, the White House also accused Moscow of discussing a deal in which Pyongyang would ship weapons for Russia’s war in Ukraine in exchange for food and other commodities.

“North Korea has found various ways to evade sanctions and continue​ to send workers to Russia and China, including ​sending them out on student and tourist​ visa​s,” the report said.

Uriminzokkiri, a North Korean website, called the new report “slander and fabrication.”

The report was based on a survey of more than 500 North Koreans who defected to South Korea between 2017 and 2022, providing one of the most up-to-date assessments of the human rights conditions of North Koreans, including those working overseas.

It did not reveal the identities of those who participated in the survey. But two North Koreans who worked in Russia before defecting to the South last year confirmed key details in interviews with The New York Times.

The defectors spoke on condition of anonymity for fear that North Korean authorities ​would ​find and retaliate against their relatives back home.

One of the defectors, 50, worked as a construction hand in Moscow from 2017 to last year. He and his colleagues lived in shipping containers at construction sites or on the ground floor of apartment buildings still ​under construction.

What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.

They were alerted in advance of the local police arriving for inspections so they could hide, he said.

The workers were each required to earn $7,000 to $10,000 a year for their government. They also had to make various “loyalty” donations, including chipping in for funds purportedly being raised to renovate the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, a mausoleum in Pyongyang where Mr. Kim’s father and grandfather lie in state.

​Supervisors kept the workers’ earnings until it was time for them to return home, giving them only 3,00 rubles ($38) a month to buy cigarettes, said a 41-year-old ​defector who worked in construction in Sakhalin, an island off the Russian Far East.

After toiling for years, many of these workers remain broke with no savings. Others take home ​as much as ​$20,000 to $30,000 — an unimaginable amount in the huger-stricken North.

North Koreans are not free to travel abroad. An average worker’s monthly salary — worth just 25 cents — can barely pay for a kilogram of rice. The Unification Ministry report also cited widespread human rights violations within North Korea, such as the shooting of people accused of trying to cross the border into China during the pandemic.

Working abroad has become such a coveted privilege that bribes are often paid to officials throughout the selection process. Workers also bribe supervisors to extend their stay rather than be sent home.

To Mr. Kim’s regime, which is increasingly pinched for foreign currency while pouring resources into a growing nuclear arsenal, these workers are a crucial source of cash.

Before being sent abroad, the government carefully vets each person for political loyalty. ​People with relatives who have defected to the South are ineligible. So are people who have served in submarine and missile units with access to sensitive information.

Political minders follow the workers abroad, inspecting their letters for signs of disloyalty. When the workers are allowed to travel outside their dormitories to go shopping, they have to move in groups of three or four so they can spy on each other.

Last week, President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea vowed to reveal “every detail” of the North’s human rights abuse, as his government struggles to find diplomatic leverage to force Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.

Human rights groups have compared the conditions faced by North Korean workers abroad to “state-sponsored slavery.” Still, there remains a huge backlog of North Koreans waiting to be sent abroad once pandemic restrictions are fully lifted, according to the two defectors.

One big incentive the workers have over their starving compatriots is enough food to eat. They were also exposed to the internet, watching South Korean dramas out of view of their supervisors.

After a life in the totalitarian North, the 50-year-old defector said the smartphone he bought in secret while working abroad helped him realize that North Koreans lived like “frogs trapped in a deep well.”

Now in Seoul, he is recuperating from recent cancer surgery. He said he wants to find work in construction in the South so he can save enough money to help smuggle his family.

His smartphone’s screen saver flashed a photo of his smiling teenage daughter, still living in North Korea.

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