North Korean workers dispatched overseas are suffering through 17 hours of heavy labor every day and earn a meager $50 to $100 per month, a South Korean civic group said Thursday.

North Korea has sent more than 50,000 workers abroad, mainly to China and Russia, as it seeks to obtain dollars despite poor working conditions in these countries. 

According to testimony presented at a seminar in Seoul, North Korean laborers dispatched overseas are forced to work excessively long hours starting at 6 a.m. and ending around 11 p.m. with almost no time off. 

Yoon Yeo-sang, chief director of the North Korean Human Rights Archives under the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, said the North Korean workers nominally have one day off per month, but all the workers are not necessarily allowed to take the break.

Yoon claimed, for example, that a North Korean worker had to work without having a day off for two or three months at a time and only got to rest on a national holiday.

Dwelling facilities for the North Koreans are very poor especially in Russia where North Korean lumber workers have to endure severe cold without proper heating, Yoon said. "They are living like refugee camps."

According to Yoon, on average a North Korean gets paid less than $100 a month, although the worker is nominally paid $500.

Roughly 70 percent of the pay is taken by North Korean authorities with an additional 10 to 20 percent being deducted for lodging and food expenses.

According to the civic center, approximately $200 million to $300 million in cash is being sent to North Korea's regime annually.

He said that up to 100,000 North Koreans are dispatched to labor-intensive sectors in some 40 foreign countries such as China, Russia, Mongolia and certain Middle Eastern countries. 

But a government official said the number of the North's overseas workers has sharply increased to around 50,000 to 60,000 in recent years from some 20,000 in 2010.

Yoon said some of the North Korean laborers often flee their work sites to get side jobs or defect to other countries like China and South Korea as they cannot endure the harsh oversight of their North Korean controllers.

"There are reports of detention facilities operated by the North's state security ministry," Yoon said.

The human rights center collected information from 20 North Korean defectors who previously worked overseas and also conducted an on-site survey of North Korean laborers in Poland and Mongolia. (Yonhap)