The North Korean forced labour building Doha's desert dream

As dusk falls on the luxury high-rise emerging from the swirling sands in the desert north of Doha, dozens of labourers hurry off the construction site and its surrounding buildings and on to buses waiting to take them back to their accommodation.

First to leave are the Vietnamese, then the Indians, followed by Nepalese and Thais - a united nations of workers helping Qatar build the vision for its future.

But late into the evening, after everyone else has left, one group of workers toil on, their efforts lit only by an occasional fluorescent tube light. The voices echoing around the site reveal their unlikely origin. These men are North Korean; an army of labourers from a tyrannical dictatorship, working on perhaps the most high-profile development in Qatar: Lusail City.

When completed, the metropolis will have two golf courses, an entertainment city, housing for 200,000 and a state-of-the-art 86,000-seat stadium that is set to host the 2022 World Cup final.

"They work constantly," said a manager of the lavish tower project, which employs about 50 North Koreans. "I have even built a room for them so they can rest without having to go back to their labour camp."

Despite the many hours they spend on the site, the North Koreans building the tower, and thousands more working on sites across Qatar, may receive as little as 10 per cent of their salary during the three years they typically work in Qatar.