Reuters World News - North Korea’s fake eyelashes

Episode Date: February 3, 2024

For sanctions-strapped North Korea, sales of fake eyelashes – marketed in beauty stores around the world as “made in China” – are a vital source of foreign currency. Listen to a special episode of Reuters World News to hear how North Korean eyelashes make their way to the West. Hear about the workers who make the product and the town in China that bills itself as the ‘eyelash capital of the world’. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are your made-in-China false eyelashes actually dependent on North Korean labour? In this special edition of Reuters World News, we look at how sales of these eyelashes helped drive a recovery in the secret of state's exports last year, and how they're ending up on shelves around the world. I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. And I'm Eduardo Baptista in Beijing. Millions of dollars' worth of North Korean false eyelashes

have found their way to beauty stores around the world, branded as made in China. Repackaging North Korean false eyelashes in China gives Kim Jong-un's regime a way to skirt international sanctions, and the industry has provided a vital source of foreign currency to the country. That's according to industry sources, trade lawyers and customs documents. Eduardo has been covering China for six years. He's spent the last three months reporting out this story from Beijing and also from Pingdu, a Chinese town that describes itself as the eyelash capital of the world.

Eduardo, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. So Eduardo, how are these eyelashes made in North Korea ending up on shelves as made in China? Well, what our reporting can reveal is that, firstly, there are Chinese manufacturers all over the country, but mainly concentrated in the northeastern part. And after they receive the raw materials,

they then send them to North Korea, where workers in factories do very time-consuming and delicate work. on these raw materials to shape them into the false eyelashes. And after the shape of the false eyelash is complete, it is then sent back to the Chinese factory that originally had sent the original materials to North Korea. And then they basically do a packaging operation, which then gives the final product a made-in-China label. And so when you then buy this product, say in the UK, in the United States, anywhere in the world, when you look at the It won't say made in North Korea.

It will say made in and then the name of the Chinese factory. The Monchiri factory in China's Pingdu is one of the companies that package false eyelashes produced primarily by North Koreans. Wang Ting Ting, whose family owns the firm, said North Korean labor has helped build Monchiri up from a small family workshop. She told Reuters the quality of the North Korean product is much better. But declined to name her international client. clients. Reuters was unable to establish whether any Western companies are currently involved in the

North Korean eyelash trade. Other manufacturers in Pingdu said they are conscious of the role sanctions play in the complicated distribution chain. North Korea did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry said Beijing and Pyongyang are friendly neighbors and that normal cooperation between the two countries that is lawful and compliant should not be exaggerated. Eduardo, does the process breach international? sanctions on North Korea? It doesn't necessarily because the UN Security Council has resolutions that define very clearly what kind of products made in North Korea come under sanctions. So, for example, UN Security Council resolutions restrict Pyongyang's ability to trade products

such as coal and oil. They've also restricted the ability of North Koreans to work abroad. But there is no direct ban on hair products. So trading false eyelashes from North Korea does not necessarily violate international law. And what's the scale of the industry? Like, if I go and buy a pair of false eyelashes, how likely are they to have been at least partially made in North Korea? Well, as you can imagine, given the origin of the product, there aren't a lot of, if any, consultancy reports that talk about, you know, exact estimates regarding the size of the industry. But from our interviews that we did in northeastern China, we can conclude that North Korean labor and North Korean products have been instrumental in turning Pingdu into the global capital

of false eyelashes. And so when you have hundreds of manufacturers in this northeastern Chinese town exporting to North America, to Brazil, to the Middle East, to Russia, there's a very high likelihood then that if you do buy a false eyelash package in any large shop or shopping mall, there's a high likelihood that that contains North Korean labour. Seoul-based businessman Johnny Lee imports products like chicken feet-shaped lashes used for extensions through Dandong into South Korea.

Those lashes are made by North Koreans, packaged in China, and then sold locally or exported to Asian countries like Japan. Lee says. Asked about legal risks related to trading eyelashes from North Korea, Lee said he was not selling sophisticated technology like semiconductors. And that North Korean workers are trying to make a living there. We know from our reporting that they are getting paid salaries that can go as low as a tenth of what a Chinese worker doing a similar job would make.

But one of our interviewees did tell us that whenever their North Korean workers brought up the question of monthly pay, they would also talk about how this pay enables them to buy rice. And I think this speaks to how many of the Chinese and South Korean business people we interviewed, they kind of see themselves as making a profit from this eyelash trade, but also helping North Koreans make a living. So how big is the business for North Korea's economy? Because of international sanctions targeting North Korea

and the fact that most countries in the UN are following these sanctions, it's very hard to get an accurate, global estimate of how much revenue North Korean false eyelashes are able to generate for Pyongyang. However, we've looked at Chinese customs data, which reflects North Korea's exports to China, which as our story highlights, is in fact the global gateway for North Korean false eyelashes. And this data shows that if we just look at 2023, the North Korea's exports to China more than doubled compared to 2022 when the North Korean border with China was completely closed due to the pandemic. And we also know from looking even more closely at the breakdown of this Chinese customs data that nearly 60% of the declared North Korean

exports to China during this period were wigs and eyelashes. And so in total, North Korea during these 11 months of 2023, exported 1,400 tons of false eyelashes. And that amounts to about 150 million US dollars. That's it for this special edition of Reuters World News. Thanks very much to Eduardo and all the team in China and Korea who worked on this story. The podcast is produced by myself, Tara Oaks, Chris Wall Jasper, Jonah Green,

and David Spencer. Kim Vinal is our regular host, Lila de Cretz. is our executive producer. Engineering and sound design by Josh Summer. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, listen in for 10 minutes every weekday. And don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player or download the Reuters app.