Saving Seafood

US commission urges action on alleged North Korean labor in China fishing

March 13, 2024 — A U.S. congressional commission has called on the Biden administration to act against alleged forced labor involving North Korean workers in China’s fishing industry, saying seafood sales to U.S. consumers could be helping finance North Korea’s weapons programs.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

North Korea is under U.S.-led international sanctions, to which China is a party, aimed at reining in ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs that threaten the United States and its allies.

The sanctions include prohibition of the use of North Korean labor in third countries, and as the Congressional Executive Commission on China letter states, U.S. law prohibits imports of any goods made with North Korean labor.

CONTEXT

The concerns were highlighted in a letter dated on Monday and made available on Wednesday sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Alejandro Mayorkas, head of the Department of Homeland Security, from Republican Representative Chris Smith and Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, co-chairs of the commission.

Read the full article at Reuters

US commission pushing Biden administration to halt imports of Chinese seafood linked to North Korean labor

March 13, 2024 — The U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China has sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas calling on the officials’ two departments to collaborate in determining whether seafood processed in China using North Korean labor is making its way into the U.S. supply chain.

The letter adds to earlier calls from the commission for federal action against Chinese companies credibly accused of using forced labor in seafood processing. In December, the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party issued its own report recommending special trade status for the country.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Trident, High Liner, Sysco cut ties with Chinese companies tied to North Korean labor

February 27, 2024 — Trident Seafoods, High Liner Foods, and Sysco are among the U.S. seafood firms that have suspended relationships with Chinese processors named in the latest Outlaw Ocean Project report, which revealed their use of North Korean labor, in violation of U.N. sanctions and U.S. law.

The use of North Korean laborers was prohibited in 2017 by the United Nations Security Council in response to the country testing a series of nuclear and ballistic weapons, and the U.S. has also passed a law categorizing the use of North Korean labor as forced labor unless credibly proven otherwise. Despite that, Outlaw Ocean estimates more than 120,000 metric tons (MT) of seafood have been shipped from companies using North Korean laborers to American importers since 2017.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

North Korean workers used by Chinese seafood suppliers, Outlaw Ocean Project finds

February 26, 2024 —  Seafood processed by Chinese companies using labor from North Korea has made its way into international seafood supply chains, according to a new Outlaw Ocean report published in The New Yorker magazine.

The latest story builds on previous work by the Outlaw Ocean Project which discovered evidence of Uyghur labor in the supply chains of prominent seafood companies, retailers, and distributors. The new report details evidence gathered over several months which suggests Chinese seafood processing companies providing seafood for companies in the U.S., Canada, and Europe are using North Korean labor to cut costs – violating United Nations sanctions and laws in the respective countries.

Outlaw Ocean said its team of researchers partnered with investigators and advocates in South Korea and China to obtain evidence of North Korean workers being forced to work long hours for little pay in long-term contracts. Interviews with North Koreans, kept anonymous out of fear of persecution, detail work conditions wherein the laborers – mainly North Korean women – were often held inside fenced-in worker compounds and compelled to work via coercion and threats against family members.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

The deadly secret of China’s invisible armada

August 26, 2020 — The battered wooden “ghost boats” drift through the Sea of Japan for months, their only cargo the corpses of starved North Korean fishermen whose bodies have been reduced to skeletons. Last year more than 150 of these macabre vessels washed ashore in Japan, and there have been more than 500 in the past five years.

For years the grisly phenomenon mystified Japanese police, whose best guess was that climate change pushed the squid population farther from North Korea, driving the country’s desperate fishermen dangerous distances from shore, where they become stranded and die from exposure.

But an NBC News investigation, based on new satellite data, has revealed what marine researchers now say is a more likely explanation: China is sending a previously invisible armada of industrial boats to illegally fish in North Korean waters, violently displacing smaller North Korean boats and spearheading a decline in once-abundant squid stocks of more than 70 percent.

Read the full story at NBC News

Satellites uncover widespread illegal fishing in Pacific Ocean

July 23, 2020 — Orbital observations have revealed extensive illegal fishing of Pacific flying squid (Todarodes pacificus) in the Pacific Ocean around Russia, Japan and North and South Korea in 2017 and 2018, a new study reports.

In fact, “extensive” may not be a strong enough word. More than 900 vessels of Chinese origin probably violated United Nations sanctions by fishing in North Korean waters in 2017, and another 700 did the same in 2018, the study found.

These scofflaw ships likely hauled in more than 176,000 tons (160,000 metric tons) of Pacific flying squid over those two years, a catch worth about US $440 million, study team members said. That’s nearly equivalent to the combined T. pacificus catch of Japan and South Korea over the same span.

“The scale of the fleet involved in this illegal fishing is about one-third the size of China’s entire distant-water fishing fleet,” said study co-lead author Jaeyoon Park, a senior data scientist at Global Fishing Watch, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing ocean sustainability via greater transparency.

Read the full story at MSN

Study: Chinese ‘dark fleets’ illegally defying sanctions by fishing in North Korean waters

July 23, 2020 — Chinese “dark fleets” illegally fished a $440 million haul of the squid species Todarodes pacificus in North Korean waters during 2017 and 2018, according to a study published today in the journal Science Advances.

The study used a novel set of satellite images to track fishing vessels operating off the northeast coast of the Korean peninsula, including satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR), visible infrared imaging radiometer suite sensors (VIIRS), high-resolution optical imagery, and identification beacon data from some of the vessels themselves. Its authors say that this is one of the first times those technologies have been combined to map illicit fishing at such a large scale over a years-long period.

“We believe that this study marks the beginning of a new era in fisheries management, transparency, and monitoring,” said Jaeyoon Park, senior data scientist at Global Fishing Watch and a co-lead author of the paper.

Park and his colleagues used data collected from Planet Labs, an Earth-imaging company that has also been instrumental in tracking deforestation caused by hard-to-track illegal gold mining, to map the movement of fishing boats in contested waters around the Korean peninsula. They found that in 2017, more than 900 Chinese fishing boats traveled to an area in North Korea’s exclusive economic zone, followed by another 700 in 2018.

Read the full story at Mongabay

Huge Chinese illegal fishing operation in North Korean waters uncovered

July 22, 2020 — A new study has uncovered a massive illegal fishing operation conducted by Chinese fishing vessels in North Korean waters.

The study, Illuminating Dark Fishing Fleets in North Korea, found at least 700 vessels of Chinese origin had fished illegally in North Korean waters in 2018, and that more than 900 had done so in 2017 – in violation of United Nations sanctions. It estimated the illegal take of Pacific flying squid from the participating vessels is more than 160,000 metric tons, worth over USD 440 million (EUR 380.2 million) in 2017-2018. The total take is greater than the entire catch of the fishing fleets of Japan and South Korea combined. The study found that such large, unregulated catches are depleting squid stocks in the region, with squid populations plummeting by 80 percent and 82 percent in South Korean and Japanese waters, respectively, since 2003.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Bipartisan bill addresses human trafficking impact on global seafood trade

September 20, 2018 — Guam’s delegate to Congress filed a bill this week that would amend an existing law that targets human trafficking to address the seafood industry’s role.

U.S. Delegate Madeline Bordallo, a Democrat, explained in a release that she offered the legislation because the country needs to eliminate human rights abuses worldwide and that American fishermen should not have to compete against imported seafood caught using slave or forced labor. Bordallo’s cosponsors include U.S. Delegate Aumua Amata (R-American Samoa), U.S. Representative Suzanne Bonamici (D-Oregon) and U.S. Representative Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona).

H.R. 6834, if passed, would bring on the Secretary of Commerce, who oversees NOAA Fisheries, as part of the President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. The panel, which currently includes nearly 20 federal agencies, is responsible for coordinating the government’s actions to combat trafficking.

Bordallo’s bill also comes three months after the State Department’s human trafficking report found fisheries in more than 40 countries benefit from forced labor.

Currently, the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act, passed in February 2016, prohibits the United States from accepting imported goods made or processed by forced labor. Officials from U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the law, in its first two years, helped stop 15 shipments of Chinese seafood that were processed by North Korean laborers.

Read the full story at Seafood Source