A North Korean worker is trying to take a Dutch shipyard to court over his "slave-like" employment at a sub-contractor shipbuilder in Poland.
The unnamed man has filed a criminal complaint alleging that the Dutch company profited from the abuse of workers in its supply chain in Poland, which it was aware of, Reuters reported.
The Dutch yard is not being named to avoid undermining a possible prosecution.
It allegedly employed Polish shipyard Crist despite knowing it subjected workers to "inhumane, slave-like conditions".
The worker said he endured 12-hour days in unsafe conditions and had much of his earnings seized by the North Korean government, according to his lawyers.
Crist told Reuters it has never employed North Korean workers directly, but referred to a Polish staffing agency, Armex, which it said had "done some work" for the shipyard prior to 2016.
"We learned there was a possibility of irregularities in regards with employment of Armex workers (some of them were from North Korea) but we do not know the details," a spokesman said.
"Without the time frame, the name of the shipbuilding firm [the subject of the complaint], or the project name, we cannot give you specific information on the issue."
Agency liquidated
North Korea has previously denied workers are deprived of pay.
The Netherlands' prosecutor's office said it had received the criminal complaint.
Poland's national labour inspectorate told the Thomson Reuters Foundation it found 29 North Koreans working at a Crist shipyard illegally in 2013 who were supplied by Armex, yet had initially been employed by a company registered in North Korea.
Armex went into liquidation last year.
