Correspondence
Email sent to the contact address for Rhee Bros. January 17, 2023: A letter with the same text as the email dated January 10 was sent by certified mail.
The email said: "I’m writing to you in light of our latest investigation, which concerns abuses in the Chinese squid fishing industry, and a link we’ve discovered between companies engaged in abuses and your supply chain.
This link concerns a Chinese squid jigger owned by the Chinese fishery company, Rongcheng Wangdao Ocean Aquatic Products. In a seven-month period, one crew member died and a second was disembarked for emergency medical treatment after suffering serious mistreatment and abuse while on board the vessel. Our reporting documents multiple indicators of forced labor among crew onboard the vessel: recruitment linked to debt, deceptive recruitment, enforced isolation, degrading living conditions, physical violence, wage withholding, the retention of personal identity documents and strong financial penalties for leaving employment.
We have traced squid caught by that vessel to a large Chinese fisheries company in Shandong province called the Chishan Group. Further to its connections to the vessel, ships owned by the Chishan Group were found fishing in North Korean waters in violation of UN sanctions in 2017 and 2018. One of Chishan’s processing plants, Shandong Haidu Ocean Product Co. Ltd., supplies squid products to Rhee Bros, who in turn supplies Wild Sea branded squid to Kroger, among other retailers. Import records show that Shandong Haidu shipped over 570 tons of squid to Rhee Bros over the 2017-2022 period.
Does Rhee Bros have any comment or statement to make on the record in response to this information?"
The Outlaw Ocean Project emailed Rhee Bros: "I contacted you earlier this year regarding The Outlaw Ocean Project’s investigation into abuses in the Chinese squid fishing industry as it related to your supply chain. I am contacting you again in light of new findings made as part of our ongoing reporting, which concerns the use of forced labor in China’s seafood processing industry.
Your supplier Rizhao Meijia Aquatic Foodstuff Co. Ltd. is a Meijia Group company. The Meijia Group and another of your suppliers, Shandong Haidu, have received persons from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China under the state-imposed labor transfer program. The United Nations, human rights organizations and academic experts agree that since 2018, the Chinese government has systematically subjected Xinjiang’s predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities to forced labor across the country via state-sanctioned employment schemes which use coercive methods in worker enrollment, and obstruct freedom to leave employment. The U.S. has prohibited the importation of goods produced from state-imposed forced labor.
Does Rhee Bros have any comment or statement to make in light of the above information? Please respond to this email by close of business June 20, 2023."
Email sent to two contact addresses for Rhee Bros, saying: "We previously emailed Rhee Bros on January 17, 2023, and June 15, 2023, regarding our investigation into China’s squid fishing fleet and the use of forced labor in China’s seafood processing industry. Since then, our ongoing investigation has made further findings which we want to bring to your attention. We have investigators on the ground in China who have been engaging with labor brokers directly involved with the transfer of North Korean workers to factories in China. Through this and other investigative means, including collecting online footage from the plants and interviews with workers recently returned to North Korea from China, we’ve found large numbers of North Korean workers at a range of seafood processing plants in Dandong city, close to China’s border with North Korea. As part of this work, we have information that as recently as December 2023, there were 50-70 workers at Dandong Galicia Seafood Co. Ltd. in Dandong.
According to trade records, Rhee Bros was the consignee for shipments of seafood, including pollock and cod, from Dandong Galicia between September 2017 and January 2023. The use of North Korean workers was prohibited by the United Nations Security Council in 2017, with Resolution 2397. Furthermore, under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), passed in 2017, the United States prohibits the import of any goods produced by North Korean nationals. Like the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which pertains to Xinjiang labor, CAATSA has a "rebuttable presumption" whereby all North Korean workers are presumed to be state-sponsored forced labor.
As a result, we have several questions: 1) While we understand that you may not be aware of the above issues, we want to ask if Rhee Bros has any comment about this information that we are presenting? 2) Can you please itemize for us, which of your customers receive seafood tied to Dandong Galicia? 3) Has Rhee Bros conducted any social audits at this plant and if so what type, when, with what result, and were these audits unannounced? 4) If audits were indeed conducted at this plant, what - if any - language or process was included in those audits specifically to identify the presence of North Korean workers?"