Several thousand North Korean migrant workers in Helong engaged in civil unrest, including a factory occupation and the taking of managers as hostages, due to unpaid wages.

North Korean migrant workers are a significant source of finances for the North Korean state. Often working in hard labour fields such as construction, logging, textile production, or mining, migrant workers' conditions have been frequently described by human rights activists as a modern-day form of slavery. North Korean labourers are frequently found in China, Russia, and the Gulf states, although they are also located in other countries.

Helong is a county-level city in southeastern Jilin province, Northeast China. It is under the administration of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. In January 2024, several thousand North Korean migrant workers in the city initiated a series of protests over withheld payments.

According to South Korean sources, between 11 and 14 January 2024, several thousand North Korean migrant workers in the Chinese city of Helong went on strike over unpaid wages. The civil unrest ended after North Korean authorities agreed to distribute several months' worth of pay to the workers. While many of the sources that reported on the event cited a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU) and a North Korean defector who claimed to have informants in the region, Chinese authorities have denied that the incidents occurred and several news sources, including Newsweek and Reuters, have stated that they have been unable to independently verify the stories.