This is the first part of a two-part series by Andrei Lankov on a recent trip to Vladivostok. 

Since the late 1990s North Korean workers – poorly dressed, hard-working and quiet – have been a part of life in Vladivostok, Russia’s easternmost major city, located just few hours drive from the border of the DPRK.

Technically, North Korean workers have been present in the region since 1946, but prior to the late 1990s they were loggers and typically lived in isolated forest camps far away from civilization.

But things changed in the late 1990s, when construction became the major