Sex Slavery and North Korea

Sex trafficking/sex slavery has been a huge issue for North Korean women. The problem does not seem to be relevant inside North Korea. However it has been said that 90 percent of women who escape North Korea through the Chinese border, are trafficked. Men in China know that refugees are looking for a place to live and have never been out of their home country and are desperate for any kind of work. These men then trick the North Korean women into thinking they will have a job as a maid or something of that sort when they are taken and sold to other men or prostitution rings. 

A woman named Mun Yun-Hee was sold into sex slavery at 26 after she crossed the Duman river into China. She was found there by a trafficker eagerly looking for desperate women to pick up and bring in. After being asked why she escaped North Korea she replied, "My father starved to death in the late 1990s and my mother is blind from hunger." After being sold she was captured by the Chinese police and deported back to North Korea. As punishment she was sent to a prison camp where she talks about men being beaten with clubs and women pregnant from sex trafficking in China were forced to have abortions on grounds that the baby would have had a Chinese father. After months in prison camps she was released and was asked by a refugee organization if she would like to be sent to South Korea. She replied that she would rather be sold back to the man in China because she was able to eat and send money back for her family to help them buy food and pay their debt. Mun would have rather sold her body for money than go hungry. No one should ever have to make that call.

The reason there is so much sex trafficking is because people are desperately trying to get out of North Korea. They are desperately trying to get out because of the conditions there and major lack of food. The way to end sex trafficking is to end the cause and effect relationship between escaping hunger and between being sold into sex slavery. Something that Sarah Mendelson talks about in Born Free as a Sustainable Development Goals says this “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.” as well as “Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all." To ensure that sex trafficking stops, in North Korea specifically, then the hunger issue needs to be addressed. In order to have a sustainable economy and environment that ensures decent work for all women should not have to choose between selling their bodies and eating a meal. 

Here is a story of another woman who was forced into sex slavery after escaping North Korea:

Escape from North Korea: 'I was sold into slavery and forced to have an abortion'

Ji Hiyunah escaped from North Korea and was sold into sex slavery. She was captured and deported back to North Korea twice. After becoming pregnant with a Chinese mans baby from her sex slavery, she was forced to have an abortion in a prison camp without anaesthetic. She said that she would rather go back to China where she would not have to eat frogs and insects to survive. After 9 years of sex slavery and being deported back to North Korea she finally made it to safety in South Korea. 

Sources:

http://www.northkoreanow.org/those-who-flee-the-bride-trafficking-of-north-korean-refugee-women/

http://reliefweb.int/report/china/north-korea-human-trafficking-thrives-across-nkorea-china-border