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News Articles
“How Can I be Sold Like This?”
The trafficking of North Korean women refugees.
by Donna M. Hughes |
[July 19, 2005, 7:34 AM]
In late May, a female North Korean refugee hiding in China sent
this plea for help to an operative in the underground railroad:
|
Please help us. Please save us from this darkness full of
danger. We are currently living in China risking danger
every day. It is not just me alone, but my mother, elder
sister, and my elder sister's 3-year-old daughter. The only
crime we have is coming here to find something to eat
because we were hungry. What is worse than being hungry is
the constant worry and fear that at any moment we might get
caught. |
An estimated 200,000 North Koreans have escaped to northeast
China. Some of them are looking for food. Some of them are
fleeing for their lives from prison camps or political
persecution. Some of them are Christians who the Kim Jong-Il
regime targets for the worst torture. Some of them are relatives
of an arrested person, fleeing for their own safety because when
one person is accused of a crime, all members of the family are
arrested and imprisoned.
China, in support of the North Korean regime and in violation of
the United Nations treaty on treatment of refugees, arrests the
refugees and sends them back to be interrogated, put in camps,
and even executed. China reportedly has special units to hunt
down and arrest refugees and pays bounties to people who turn in
refugees in hiding.
Women and children are increasingly the majority of refugees
crossing the river into China. If they can locate a friend or
relative's house, they have a chance at finding a safe haven.
But if the ethnic Korean Chinese traffickers find them first,
they are abducted and sold, either to men as informal wives or
concubines or to karaoke clubs for prostitution. Their price and
destination are determined by their age and appearance. China's
one-child policy has resulted in a deficit of women from
selective abortions, infanticide, and the selling off of girl
babies. Kidnapping and trafficking have become common ways that
Chinese men acquire women.
The women are raped by sellers and buyers. Some of the
traffickers are looking for a woman for themselves, and they
sell the other ones. According to an activist who makes regular
trips to China to assist refugees, women are mostly sold in
cities in Jilin Province in northeast China. He has gone to
karaoke clubs in search of women and found that the clubs were
protected by Chinese police. A young woman refugee said that
Chinese officials are complicit in the trafficking of North
Korean women.
Once a woman is sold, she is completely powerless. If she offers
any protest, she is threatened with exposure to the Chinese
authorities. There are reported cases of vengeful men reporting
women to the police. They are then deported to North Korea. Most
often, women are resold to another man after the original buyer
tires of them.
To hide from the Chinese police, families or small groups of
refugees climb into the mountains of northeast China and build
shelters to hide in and sleep at night. During the day, they
walk down into towns in search of food or work.
A secret underground railroad, run mostly by christian
activists, operates to get refugees to safety. If the conductors
on this railroad are caught, they are arrested and sentenced to
prison in China. Brave North Korean activists, who could be
deported if they are caught — and certainly executed — risk
their lives to help the refugees.
One woman refugee said that ethnic Korean Chinese men hunt for
them in the forests and mountains. If they find them they rape
them and force them to "marry." An activist reported seeing a
family victimized by Chinese men. Last October he went in search
of a family — a father, mother, and 22-year-old daughter — who
had requested help. The family had been working on a frog farm
in exchange for food, but the farmer refused to pay them. On the
day he visited, five Chinese men were there to collect a
shipment of frogs and had spotted the family. The activist saw
the daughter with ripped clothing. She had been raped by the
men. Her parents were powerless to protect their daughter. When
the activist later returned to help the family, they were gone.
There is evidence that women are trafficked to China from inside
North Korea as well. Tim Peters, director of Helping Hands,
assisted a 26-year-old woman refugee who was sold to a violent
man. After the death of her father and mother in North Korea, a
sympathetic woman offered to help her get to China where she
could live with the woman's relatives. But after they crossed
the Tumen River, she observed the woman being paid 1,500 yuan
($190) by a man. She was sold to a married man who bought her to
be his concubine. She escaped with the help of a christian
activist.
There are numerous reports of women in North Korea being so
hungry and desperate that they allow traffickers to sell them to
someone in China. As awful as this is, it enables them to live,
eat, and maybe send some money or food back to other family
members.
South Korea has been reluctant to accept North Korean refugees
for fear it will displease Kim Jong-Il. Consequently, there are
relatively few refugees there officially. Of the estimated 6,700
North Koreans in South Korea, 4,000 of them are women. Pastor
Chun Ki-won, director of the Durihana Mission based in Seoul,
South Korea, is active in assisting refugees. A modern-day
liberator, he has been arrested and imprisoned in China for his
part in running the underground railroad. According to him, 80
to 90 percent of the women refugees in South Korea have been
victims of sex trafficking.
Pastor Chun Ki-won's name and his mission are well-known among
refugees hiding in China. He receives one to two letters a day
from women describing how they have been sold and asking for
assistance. He said, "Women are treated like animals. They have
no rights. Whoever finds them first can sleep with them. Then he
sells them later."
Refugees caught in China are routinely arrested and deported to
North Korea. Those who flee from North Korea are considered
traitors to the government and the ruling ideology of Juche or
self reliance. The returnees are imprisoned in detention
centers, interrogated, mistreated, and starved. Pregnant women
are forcibly aborted or newborns killed to keep "foreign" blood
out of North Korea.
According to a first-hand report, in March 1999, a 26-year-old
woman in a detention center was executed for "selling herself"
in China. Yun Hye-ryeon, wife of Aquariums of Pyongyang author
Kang Chul-hwan, was in the cell next to this woman. The woman
had crossed into China to feed herself and her baby, but
according to the North Korean officials she fell under the
influence of capitalism and sold herself for money. She was
publicly executed as a lesson to others.
Yun Hye-ryeon works with her husband for their human-rights
organization — NK Gulag — to collect testimonies from refugees.
She says that the majority of women refugees in China are raped
and trafficked. Even those who have made it to South Korea still
suffer from the trauma of their experience. "North Korean women
in South Korea have painful memories in their hearts." As a
result of being sold several times, they don't trust men any
more. They still suffer from the trauma of their experience and
have a difficult time adapting to life in South Korea.
Yet, all the letters that Pastor Chun Ki-won receives beg for
help to escape and come to South Korea. The author of one letter
wrote: "I want to live like a human being for one day. I am a
human being. How can I be sold like this? I need freedom."
— Donna M. Hughes is professor and
Carlson Endowed Chair in Women's Studies at the University of
Rhode Island. She was recently in Seoul where she interviewed
North Korean refugees and activists in the underground railroad.
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