The head of Orenburg, Albert Yumadlov, said he plans to hire North Korean citizens as cleaners, but they are not willing to work for the salary the city administration is willing to offer them.
Orenburg city portal 1743.ru quoted Umadilov as saying: “As far as I know, workers from North Korea will not receive 55 thousand (rubles). The wage level there is two or three times higher. It is clear that they have more efficiency, they work like robots, I saw with my own eyes, they are really robots… But we simply cannot afford the salary.”
Meanwhile, the Orenburg president said that migrants from Senegal are working in the city’s residential and community complex. He said that in April, the first 10 street cleaners from this African country appeared in the city. Yumadilov said that 31 Senegalese are currently working as cleaners in Orenburg, and four more will arrive soon, praising the quality and productivity of their work.
Russia actively attracted workers from North Korea until 2018. At that time, the Russian Federation issued more than 10,000 work visas annually to North Korean citizens. Then the United Nations tightened sanctions against North Korea, banning, in particular, the recruitment of workers from there. Russia has complied with this requirement for several years. After the outbreak of a major war between Russia and Ukraine, the BBC Russian service wrote in 2025, the Russian authorities again began to attract workers from North Korea. They enter the country on student visas to circumvent the UN ban. Meanwhile, North Koreans working in Russia find themselves in slave-like conditions, under constant surveillance by DPRK intelligence officers, and can only access the money they earn after they return to their homeland.