Last year, more than $165 million worth of false eyelashes and wigs were exported from North Korea and sold to Western countries as “made in China.”
False eyelashes and wigs, known colloquially as “fake,” accounted for 60% of North Korea’s declared exports to China in 2023, bringing in $167 million in foreign exchange for the hermit kingdom.
The country exported more than 1,600 tons of counterfeit goods alone. A Reuters investigation revealed.
The discovery raised eyebrows in Western countries, which have imposed tough sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear program and banned trading in items such as coal, textiles and oil.
The US State Department estimates that totalitarian governments have confiscated up to 90% of national income from overseas exports, leaving many people living in poverty.
Although the exact amount is unknown, the eyelash and hair trade is estimated to generate millions of dollars each month for Kim Jong Un’s regime, according to sanctions lawyer Shin Tong-chan and other international trade experts.
The trade in hair, including eyelashes, is not sanctioned, meaning North Korea is free to trade products with China without violating international law, three sanctions experts told the outlet.
The report cited 15 people in the eyelash industry as saying that China imports semi-finished eyelashes made in North Korea and affixes “Made in China” labels after the products are completed and packaged. Ta.
The products will then be shipped to Western countries, Japan and South Korea, eight people directly involved in the trade said.
North Korea’s exports to China nearly doubled in 2023 after a difficult few years due to the pandemic, during which North Korea strictly closed its borders. In 2019, just before the pandemic, the country generated just $31.1 million in revenue due to reduced production of eyelashes and other hair products.
The two Asian countries insist the trade is legal and any suggestion that it violates U.N. sanctions is “totally baseless.”
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that China and Pyongyang are “friendly neighbors” and that “the normal cooperation between the two countries, which is lawful and compliant, should not be overstated.”
However, the United States has imposed further sanctions against North Korea, including sanctions on companies selling Kim regime funds.
Two international sanctions lawyers told Reuters that the United States faces difficulties in imposing sanctions unilaterally on foreign companies whose main customers are not American citizens.
A U.S. Treasury Department spokesperson said the U.S. will “aggressively enforce a wide range of North Korea sanctions authorities against both U.S. and foreign companies” and “continue to aggressively target all revenue-generating efforts” by North Korea. Ta.
In 2019, the Treasury Department sued Elf Cosmetics for nearly $1 million for allegedly misselling false eyelashes containing ingredients from North Korea.
The cosmetics company said in a filing at the time that it discovered two of its suppliers were using ingredients from the country during “routine” audits, which it later determined was “not material.”
China has been importing eyelash materials from North Korea since the early 2000s because of the country’s low labor costs and high-quality eyelashes.
Workers in North Korea are paid only one-tenth the wages paid to workers in China for the same services.
In Pingdu, China, known as the “eyelash capital of the world,” 80% of the eyelash factories are purchased from North Korea, Reuters has revealed.
“The quality of North Korean products is much better,” said Wang Tingting, who runs a family-run company that exports products to the United States, Brazil and Russia.
Comes with post wire.
