Human Trafficking in [North Korea Street Children in [North Korea] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [North Korea] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery In the
early years of the 21st Century - 2000 to 2010 gvnet.com/humantrafficking/NorthKorea.htm
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
(DPRK or North Korea) is a source country for men, women, and children
trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual
exploitation. The most common form of trafficking involves North Korean women
and girls subjected to involuntary servitude after willingly crossing the
border into the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Once in China, they are picked up by
traffickers and sold as brides to PRC nationals, often of Korean ethnicity.
In other cases, North Korean women and girls are lured out of North Korea to
escape poor economic, social, and political conditions by the promise of
food, jobs, and freedom, only to be forced into prostitution, marriage, or
exploitative labor arrangements once in China. In some cases, women and girls may be sold
to traffickers by their families or acquaintances. Women sold as brides are
sometimes re-abducted by the traffickers or are sold by husbands who no
longer want them. In some cases, North Korean women are sold multiple times
to different men by the same trafficker. Many victims of trafficking, unable to speak
Chinese, are held as virtual prisoners. The illegal status of North Koreans
in the PRC and other Southeast Asian countries increases their vulnerability
to trafficking for purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. - U.S. State Dept Trafficking in
Persons Report, June, 2009 [full country report] |
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CAUTION: The following links have been
culled from the web to illuminate the situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLES *** An Auschwitz In Jeff Jacoby, The www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/02/08/an_auschwitz_in_korea/ [accessed 29 August 2011] Nor is it breaking news that Human Trafficking Thrives Across N.Korea-China
Border The Chosun Ilbo,
03 Mar 2008 www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/MMAH-7CE5ZU?OpenDocument [accessed 14 December 2010] A 26-year-old North Korean woman, Mun Yun-hee crossed the Duman (or Tumen) River into
China in the dawn of Oct. 22 last year, which at that point was some 40 m
wide, guided by a human trafficker. She was being sold to a single
middle-aged Chinese farmer into a kind of indentured
servitude-cum-companionship. Both of them wore only panties, having stored
their trousers and shoes in bags, because if you are found wearing wet
clothes across the river deep at night, it is a dead giveaway that you are a
North Korean refugee. Mun was led to a hideout, and the
agent left. Asked why she crossed the river, she replied, "My father
starved to death late in the 1990s, and my mother is blind from hunger."
Her family owed 300 kg of corns, beans and rice and sold herself for the sake
of her blind mother and a younger brother. The middleman paid her 350 yuan, or W46,000 (US$1=W939), equivalent to half of the
grain debt. ***
ARCHIVES *** Human Rights Reports » 2005
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, March 8, 2006 www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61612.htm [accessed 14 December 2010] TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – There
were no known laws specifically addressing the problem of trafficking in
persons, and trafficking of women and young girls into and within Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of
the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 4 June 2004 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/korea2004.html [accessed 14 December 2010] [62] The Committee notes the lack
of information in the State party report on human trafficking, in particular,
involving children. NK Defectors Describe Horrors of Human Trafficking The Dong-A ILBO, MAY 01, 2009 english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?bicode=060000&biid=2009050137348 [accessed 14 December 2010] Bang Mi-sun, who came to the South
in 2004, spoke first. She said she fled the North to feed her two children
after her husband starved to death in 2002. “I thought that if I went to
China, I could eat heartily and lead a better life than in North Korea. What
waited for me was a wretched life,” she said. “I was sold to a disabled Chinese man for
585 dollars at a human trafficking market and resold to another man.” Bang was caught by Chinese police
and repatriated to North Korea. There, she was subjected to severe corporal
punishment and forced labor. “I was
put in a detention camp and flogged. I was battered so badly that I cannot
walk well now,” she said. Human Trafficking Thrives Across N.Korea-China
Border The Chosun Ilbo,
03 Mar 2008 www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/MMAH-7CE5ZU?OpenDocument [accessed 14 December 2010] A 26-year-old North Korean woman, Mun Yun-hee crossed the Duman (or Tumen) River into
China in the dawn of Oct. 22 last year, which at that point was some 40 m wide,
guided by a human trafficker. She was being sold to a single middle-aged
Chinese farmer into a kind of indentured servitude-cum-companionship. Both of
them wore only panties, having stored their trousers and shoes in bags,
because if you are found wearing wet clothes across the river deep at night,
it is a dead giveaway that you are a North Korean refugee. Mun was led to a hideout, and the
agent left. Asked why she crossed the river, she replied, "My father
starved to death late in the 1990s, and my mother is blind from hunger."
Her family owed 300 kg of corns, beans and rice and sold herself for the sake
of her blind mother and a younger brother. The middleman paid her 350 yuan, or W46,000 (US$1=W939), equivalent to half of the
grain debt. Human Trafficking In Voice of www.voanews.com/a-41-2008-03-14-voa4-84655987.html [accessed 14 December 2010] Conditions inside US lashes out at NKorea's
"horrendous" human rights record Agence France-Presse
AFP, afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g2nl0vV3cTyhiS8E5loJ9St3dSLw [accessed 14 December 2010] Tens of thousands of North
Koreans, fleeing hunger or repression at home, have travelled
across the border to North Korean women crossing the
border into China are generally "most vulnerable" to trafficking
given their illegal status in China and their inability to return home, he
said. Amnesty International said it
had documented cases of North Korean women being lured from their homes and
trafficked as "sex slaves" into China, where they are sold as
brides in forced marriages. Victims of Human Trafficking Speak The Dong-A ILBO, December 15, 2006 english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?bicode=040000&biid=2006121564548 [accessed 14 December 2010] WOMEN WHO ARE SOLD INTO SLAVERY - Ms. G (age: 26), a former nurse
from the North who made it across the border to Barbara Demick, seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002707584_koreans28.html [accessed 14 December 2010] GOVERNMENT ACCOUNT - Almost the entire monthly
salaries of the women here, about $260, the Czech minimum wage, are deposited
directly in an account controlled by the North Korean government, which gives
them only a fraction of the money. To
the extent that they are allowed outside in this village 20 miles west of The refugees forced to be sex slaves in China Richard Spencer in [accessed 14 December 2010] The women who flee Why Norbert Vollertsen, Front Page
Magazine, June 15, 2005 www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1423544/posts?page=1 [accessed 14 December 2010] Most of the patients in the
hospitals suffer from psychosomatic illnesses. They’re worn out by compulsory
drills, innumerable parades, mandatory assemblies beginning at the crack of
dawn, and constant, droning propaganda. They are tired and at the end of
their tether. Clinical depression is rampant. Alcoholism is common. Young
adults have no hope, no future. Everywhere you look, people are beset by
anxiety. Editorial, The San Diego Union-Tribune, May 15, 2005 www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050515/news_lz1ed15top.html [accessed 14 December 2010] By the best estimates, between 2
million and 3 million North Koreans starved to death during the 1990s.
Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have been confined in a network of
brutal forced-labor camps. The world now has sufficient eyewitness accounts
and other documentary evidence to conclude beyond any doubt that these camps
are the scenes of horrific crimes – summary execution, torture, privation and
abuse on a hideous scale, forced abortions and infanticide, and more. The Hidden Gulag: Exposing Executive Summary, Jul 5, 2003 [accessed 14 December 2010] EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY - This report
outlines two distinct systems of repression: first, a North Korean gulag of
forced-labor colonies, camps, and prisons where scores of thousands of
prisoners — some political, some convicted felons — are worked, many to their
deaths, in mining, logging, farming, and industrial enterprises, often in
remote valleys located in the mountainous areas of North Korea; and second, a
system of smaller, shorter-term detention facilities along the North
Korea–China border used to brutally punish North Koreans who flee to China —
usually in search of food during the North Korean famine crisis of the middle
to late 1990s — but are arrested by Chinese police and forcibly repatriated
to the DPRK. Worse Than 1984 - North Korea, slave state Christopher Hitchens, Slate
Magazine, May 2, 2005 [accessed 14 December 2010] In Freedom House Country Report - Political Rights: 7 Civil Liberties: 7 Status: Not Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&year=2009&country=7638 [accessed 14 December 2010] Human Rights Overview Human Rights Watch [accessed 14 December 2010] Library of Congress Call Number DS932 .N662 1994 lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/kptoc.html [accessed 14 December 2010] An Auschwitz In Jeff Jacoby, The www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/02/08/an_auschwitz_in_korea/ [accessed 29 August 2011] Nor is it breaking news that The Democidal Famine In R.J. Rummel, OrthodoxyToday
-- Sources: Many of the specifics were taken from a report by Seong Ho Jhe, published in
" orthodoxytoday.org/articles4/RummelKorea.php [accessed 14 December 2010] [scroll down] This is not all. In this "classless" communist society,
the regime has divided North Koreans into a rigid hierarchy of three classes,
and fifty-one subdivisions, depending on a person's status within the
communist North Korean Workers Party and the military, their perceived
faithfulness to communism, and family backgrounds. In other words, Kim uses
the very food people need to live as a tool to reward and punish his subject
slaves. Thus, vast numbers of people whose loyalties are questioned or may be
deemed useless to the regime do not receive enough food to live long. The
worst off are those people and families incarcerated in Kim's concentration
or forced labor camps. They receive the lowest food allowance of all, in
spite of their being forced to work from 5 am to 8 pm. Escaping Sarah Buckley, BBC News Online, 28 July 2004 news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3932591.stm [accessed 14 December 2010] ILLEGAL WORK - They seek work - perhaps in
mines, factories or cattle farms - but are often swindled out of their
earnings. A mine owner might promise
them 500 yuan a month, but actually they are paid
less than half, or nothing at all - forced into acquiescence by the fear of
being reported to the authorities. the horrifying situation in Al-Muhajabah, Islamic Blogs, January 30, 2003 www.muhajabah.com/islamicblog/archives/veiled4allah/003778.php [accessed 14 December 2010] I've been reading about the gulags
of Grim fate for N. Korean prisoners Mike Chinoy, Cable News Network
CNN, www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/10/30/nkorea.political.prisons/index.html [accessed 14 December 2010] Hidden in the valleys between high
mountains in the northern provinces of Behind the walls of a Kwan-li-so conditions and treatment are brutal. "People are starved to death, worked
to death, frozen to death over a period of time, and it's just absolutely
horrific, reminiscent of what we've read coming out of the old Gulags under
Stalin," says Kansas Republican Sen. Sam Brownback. Along with political prisoners, up to three
generations of their families also are banished without trial -- usually for
lifetime sentences in a system of "guilt by association," the
report finds. Opening a Window on Doug Struck (with Special correspondent Joohee Cho), Washington Post
Foreign Service; Page A01, www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A41966-2003Oct3¬Found=true [accessed 14 December 2010] Han, a Communist Party official in
If a farmer or laborer had a
radio, he could have been released," Han said. "But I was an
official. In my case, it would have been torture and a life sentence in a
political prisoners' camp." Worst of the Worst: Why Christopher Hitchens, Newsweek
International, July 9, 2001 [accessed 29 August 2011] It's the totalitarian aspect that
strikes you first, as it did me when I visited A Prison Country Dr. Norbert Vollertsen, Opinion
Journal, April 17, 2001 [accessed 9 September 2011] Human rights are nonexistent.
Peasants, slaves to the regime, lead lives of utter destitution. It is as if
a basic right to exist--to be--is denied. Ordinary people starve and die.
They are detained at the caprice of the regime. Forced labor is the basic way
in which "order" is maintained. All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE
RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT ARTICLES. Cite this webpage as:
Patt, Prof. Martin, "Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery – DPRK ( |
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Human Trafficking in [North Korea Street Children in [North Korea] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [North Korea] [other countries]