Progress Report #3 HT2 (Byoungjun Ryou & Cheolhee Hong)

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/04/17/2110537/crimes-against-humanity-in-north.html

Article 1 summary

Dictatorship through three generations in North Korea have been running the system of slave camps modeled similar to that of Joseph Stalin’s in the past Soviet Union era. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have suffered the same fates for such crimes as having the wrong ideas or knowing too much about South Korea.

In North Korea, one of the considered crimes is being the parent or child of a supposed wrongdoer; the first of the country’s dynasty, Kim Il-Sung, had a policy of purging “class enemies for three generations.”

Another crime is being a pregnant woman. Perhaps the most shocking passages in “The Hidden Gulag” are descriptions of what happens to women who flee to China, are lured into sexual slavery by human traffickers, then caught by Chinese police and forced back to North Korea. When they return pregnant, some of them are forced to abort, if too late then the infants will be beaten to death by guards or buried alive.

The Chinese government has a key towards this massacre since they can play a significant role towards North Korea in terms of politics, economics and in diplomatic wise.

http://landofkim.org/2012/08/23/north-korean-women-subject-to-human-trafficking/

Article 2 Summary

Out of all the human rights violations in North Korea, it shouldn’t be a surprise to find news about human trafficking within the country. When people are fighting to make ends meet, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Women crossing over the border of China is one of the cases for many citizens who are trying to make money in a country that are financially starved and, sadly, North Korean women are the victims in this black market business for a while.

With China’s “one-child policy” there is a disproportionate ratio of men to women, as most girls were either aborted or left to die, leaving more single men than there are women.

Further, many of the men that purchase these brides are said to be unfit husbands as most are farmers and are less preferred than the men living in urban communities. Melanie reports that many of these men are either physically or mentally disabled and are “unsuitable as husbands in the eyes of Chinese women.”

While some women try to escape after being sold, others accept their fate, since their new life and new husband provides some kind of security compared to their lives in North Korea. Plus should they be caught trying to escape, they might be arrested and sent to labor camps in North Korea for illegally leaving the country.

So, North Korean women, in their desperation for a better life, are presented with an opportunity to make some cash, not knowing that they are actually merchandise to men, who are themselves victims of an inhumane population control policy that has left them lonely and desperate.

progress report by BYOUNGJUN RYOU

Mi-young Kim, who has escaped from the North Korea, had an interview with a Korean reporter.  She said that there are still many North Koreans get sold to Chinese in black market.  Chinese people have lied to them that they can eat and live well, if they escape from the North Korean border.  However, indeed, they are getting sold in black market, mostly like slaves.  Mi-young said that she has seen many people getting sold, and the Chinese government does not recognize about this human trafficking.  Among them, most of people were virgins.  They might think that it is a trap; however, they are dying to hunger, so they cannot think of anything like that.  The costs of North Korean virgins are mostly like 4500 dollars.

http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2012/03/24/2012032400057.html

2012-08-20

Kim clearly has his hands full. The only practical escape route for fugitives from North Korea is through China, and human-rights groups say roughly 80 percent of those thousands of refugees are women and girls who have become “commodities for purchase,” in Kim’s words. The most popular marketplaces are in the three Chinese provinces closest to the North Korean border—Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang—but North Korean brides are sold to men throughout China. Many of the buyers are farmers. Some have physical or mental disabilities that make them unsuitable as husbands in the eyes of Chinese women. In almost every case, the men are buying the one thing they want most in life: a wife.

But why import brides from North Korea? The answer is China’s family-planning laws. Ever since the one-child policy went into effect in 1979, Beijing has enforced it through fines, imprisonment, forced abortion, sterilization, and even, human-rights groups charge, infanticide. The policy has had its intended effect of slowing the rate of expansion of China’s population. But there has been an unwelcome side effect: an unnaturally high male-to-female ratio.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/08/19/north-korea-human-traffickers-and-the-chinese-market-for-brides.html