Up to 500k women and children as young as 12 fleeing North Korea at risk of rape and sexual slavery

As many as half a million women and girls live in fear today at the fragile border between China and North Korea.

Children as young as 12 are subjected to systematic rape, sexual slavery and forced pregnancy as organized crime groups take control of the lawless ‘Red Zone’ between the two countries.

This is a well-established fear, according to international human rights law firm Global Rights Compliance investigating rights violations in the region since 2020; Since the famine of 1994-1998 claimed the lives of between 240,000 and 3.5 million people, victims have fled “the Hermit Kingdom” to neighboring China – and gangs have long exploited the difficulty of crossing the border. stiches.

But pandemic-induced lockdowns, closed borders and blackouts of information in China have created a new ‘black hole’ of human rights violations, warns GRC, where criminal groups are today quietly profiting from a $105m (£86m) human trafficking industry as the international community turns a blind eye.

“The practice is becoming increasingly normalized,” the organization reports, “with women routinely beaten in towns and cities across the country and sold for as little as a few hundred dollars.”

“I was sold to a Han Chinese living in Yanbian,” a North Korean defector told researchers at the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKBD).

“We lived together for a year and couldn’t have a child, so he hit me.

‘He kicked me. He kicked my head a lot. I now have a depression as an aftermath.’

For years, refugees have been trying to flee the oppressive North Korean regime through the northern border to China. Traffickers facilitate this journey with officials reportedly able to offer “help and encouragement” to sex and bride trafficking, or pay local residents to report defectors.

China – an ally of sorts – does not recognize North Korean refugee status and repatriates those who flee, where they are labeled “traitors” at home and face forced labour, imprisonment without trial and in some cases the death penalty.

Victims fleeing the North Korean regime are unable to turn to the authorities for help and are increasingly susceptible to criminal organizations seeking to exploit their situation for profit.

Sofia Evangelou, Legal Counsel for Global Rights Compliance for North Korea, told MailOnline, “For North Korean people to flee North Korea… the only way to do that is to get support from brokers.

“Many of them… cheat people, or take advantage of the fact that they [are] so desperate to flee North Korea that they would [sell] them in human trafficking circles, or to [criminal] organizations that perform forced labour, and so on.’

An estimated 70% of North Korea’s migrants are expected to be women, and gangs profit the most from selling them to the sex trade.

As many as 70 to 80% of these female North Korean refugees in China are trafficked in the sex industry.

“It’s something that’s been going on for over a decade, ever since people started leaving North Korea – from the early 2000s, after the famine that happened in 1995,” explains Ms. Evangelou.

“There was a large influx of people leaving because they were starving… however, the situation has worsened due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Women who used to perform forced labor or were otherwise exploited in other industries have now been transferred to, for example, the cybersex industry.’

Many who travel to northern China are caught and trafficked. Of those who make it to China, many are sent back to North Korea or then trafficked in the sex trade

The pandemic has undoubtedly exacerbated the plight of migrants fleeing persecution and famine.

According to Amnestyborder closures reportedly ended North Korea’s importation of Chinese food — both the “legal” government-controlled deals and the unofficial “grey” market.

As prices tripled in some areas, more people felt the pressure to leave, but failed to do so. Security forces were ordered to unconditionally shoot anyone who tried to cross the border without permission. The reported number of defectors to South Korea fell to the lowest since records began in 2003.

State media, meanwhile, reported that orphans had “volunteered” en masse to take jobs in hazardous industries, including mining, as 120,000 would be subjected to forced labour, torture and other ill-treatment within North Korea’s borders.

Those who managed to escape faced exploitation at home, exploitation at the border, and exploitation even when they reached China.

The risk of deportation grew as movement increased between Chinese provinces required travelers to submit health certificates.

China’s position, says the GRC, is that human trafficking along the southeastern border is an internal matter, not the matter of an international community that has already drawn anger for taking a stand on the Xinjiang Uyghur genocide and the restricting freedom of expression and peaceful meeting in Hong Kong.

China claims those fleeing to the north are “illegal economic migrants” rather than refugees, and sends them back to North Korea, which in turn the underground organizations that promise defectors safe passage north.

“This provides fertile ground for organized crime groups to operate without any interference from the state and facilitates their operations.”

The mountainous journey is dangerous and refugees know they could lose everything if they get caught. With some Chinese ministry agents and guards reportedly aiding human trafficking operations, information breakdowns on both sides of the border have obscured the magnitude of the problem.

GRC has so far shared untold stories about North Korea’s repatriated defectors.

Deported from China in 2004, Lee Keum-Soon was mobilized for forced labor six months after a pregnancy she hid from authorities for fear her child would be forcibly aborted. When she became too weak to work, guards at a police camp made her carry stones from a riverbed.

Lee was found dead by her peers, floating in the river after drowning, exhausted. When guards saw that she had put on layers of clothing to hide her pregnancy, they stripped the remaining women in the camp to “ferret” out any children who had not yet been forced to abort.

Another survivor, whose identity has been withheld, told GRC how she was ordered to have sex with an officer, and was violently raped when she refused.

“He ordered me to take off my pants and wash my genitals.

“He ordered me to lie down naked. When I refused to do so, he took me by force and proceeded to have intercourse,’

“I was so embarrassed,” she said. ‘Where – and how – can I report this?’

Last reports suggested that some 150,000 to 200,000 North Korean defectors had reached China and were now risking this kind of treatment. Global Rights Compliance now brings that figure closer to half a million.

Refugees risk everything when they flee north because they cannot ask for help from the authorities

The 52nd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council will take place in Geneva until April 4, 2023, where Special Rapporteur have identified human rights violations in DRPK as a first priority.

Global Rights Compliance is calling for a full international investigation into the crisis developing on the North Korean-China border.

“It is imperative that the international community engages with China, either through international organizations at the UN level or at the bilateral level, calling for action or asking them to comment on the situation,” Ms Evangelou told reporters. Mail Online.

‘[They must] essentially revising their policies and complying with their international law obligations that… dictate that they must recognize North Korean people as refugees rather than as illegal economic migrants.”

She added: “If nothing is done to address the urgent human rights situation for North Korean women, the situation will only get worse, with many hundreds of thousands of women falling victim to exploitation, forced labour, and sex and bride trafficking. ‘