Two North Koreans who were seriously injured at a construction site in Russia in 2020 were students, not workers, Russia has told the U.N. Panel of Experts, denying that their presence was a breach of sanctions against hiring DPRK laborers

Moscow’s official response is included in the Panel’s latest report on DPRK sanctions violations, which was published last week.

The two North Koreans were injured in 2020 while working on a new apartment building in the Russian Far East region of Sakhalin, according to Russian authorities cited in the report. The pair fell six to seven floors when scaffolding they