vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #618 / Crime watch / Reading article...

A North Korean worker died from starvation at a Sakhalin logging site after he and another worker were left there last August and forgotten by their Russian employers ever since.

The North Korean man was found dead in the forest area, 83 kilometers from the settlement of Nysh, Sakhalin’s Nogliksky County. Police determined that the man died from hunger.

Sakhalin region’s prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into the case, the press statement said.

Police revealed that the two North Korean workers were sent to guard large engineering vehicles at the logging site in August 2007. The employers provided them with a two-month food supply. No communication devices were given to the workers. Left on their own, one man died of starvation, another one was taken to the hospital with severe exhaustion.

“This is a flagrant violation of labor legislation,” head of the federal migration service for Sakhalin region Olga Savchenko was quoted by Ria Novosti news agency as saying.

“This is not only a legal matter but also a political one. We will do everything possible to investigate the case and bring the company to justice and its activities to a halt,“ Savchenko stressed.