Escape from North Korea (13 page)

Marriage is almost always a better option for a North Korean woman than prostitution or online sex work. A woman who cannot speak Chinese would not be able to work in public places such as a restaurant or a store because the risk of arrest would be too high. The North Korean woman “would quickly realize that there was no alternative but to establish a ‘live-in' relationship with a Chinese man to avoid a police roundup,” Lee observes. “She would have to choose to ‘live-in' as a relatively safe means of staying in China.”
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The supplier's job ends when he delivers the women to the Chinese side of the Tumen or Yalu River. His fee, Steve Kim says, runs between $80 and $300 per woman, depending upon the quality of the “product” and the difficulty of the crossing. Out of that sum, the supplier is expected to cover any bribes he must pay to North Korean border guards for information about safe crossing points or for an agreement that they'll look the other way at a prearranged time. North Korean officials themselves sometimes get into the business of trafficking women, Kim says. He cites the case of a twenty-two-year-old woman he helped who identified her recruiter as a retired military officer.

Stage Two of the supply chain begins on the Chinese side of the border, where “wholesaler providers” are waiting to receive the women. The wholesaler's job is to escort the women from the border region, past Chinese ID checks, to a safer place farther inland. That is typically somewhere in the Yanbian area of Jilin Province, one of the three provinces that border North Korea. Yanbian's full name is Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, and it is home to a large number of ethnic Koreans. It's a good place for North Koreans to hide in plain sight, or in the case of the North Korean brides, be hidden.

From there, some of the women are sold directly to Korean-Chinese men who live in the region. From the woman's point of view, this is usually the better option. Life with a Korean-Chinese man, in a community where the Korean language is spoken, is preferable to life with a Han Chinese man who speaks only Mandarin and whose culture and food will be unfamiliar to the woman.

Other brides move on to Stage Three of the supply chain and are resold to “retailers” for between $500 and $800 each. The retailers then sell the women directly to their clients, usually Han Chinese who live in other parts of the country, Steve Kim says. The price ranges between $1,200 and $1,500 per woman, depending upon her age and appearance.

There are variations on the pattern Steve Kim describes, but the basic outline, as also described by aid workers, remains the same: recruitment, transfer, and delivery.

In some cases a North Korean woman will cross the river on her own before linking up with a broker. Traffickers prey on women in the border regions using the same sorts of pitches they use to recruit women in North Korea. According to the State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report, trafficking networks of Korean-Chinese and North Korean men operate in northeast China and along the Chinese–North Korean border, “where they seek out North Korean women and girls.”
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By the time a woman arrives in China, she is more vulnerable than she was at home. Listen to the voices of a few such “brides,” as compiled by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Sometimes the woman is talked into living with a Chinese man for her own “safety.” Sometimes she is threatened with exposure if she doesn't comply. Sometimes she is told nothing; she is simply sold.

Case 11: “Only when we arrived in a village in Heilongjiang did I hear that I was going to get married. I didn't have a choice because I didn't even know where I was.”
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Case 13: “We met with one ethnic Korean man by chance, and he said we should get married to a Chinese citizen to be safe. While I was not sure whether I should follow him or not, he took me to Mishan in Heilongjiang and sold me to a Han Chinese man.”
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Case 14
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“I crossed the Tumen River with three other people, and we all went to the house of ethnic Koreans nearby. This household had an orchard. They let us work there for a while, giving us food and shelter. One day, three men, including one dressed in a soldier's uniform, came in a taxi and took me to Longjing, where I was sold to an ethnic Korean man.”
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At some point along the supply chain, the North Korean woman wakes up and realizes what is happening to her. She then has two choices: Go through with the marriage, or try to escape. This is not
really a choice. The woman is on her own in a strange country. She knows no one. She doesn't speak the language. As she quickly finds out, in escaping to China from North Korea, she has exchanged one form of bondage for another. Most accept the inevitable and agree to be sold. They reason, not illogically, that life with a Chinese husband, even an abusive one, is preferable to arrest, repatriation, and imprisonment in North Korea.

The rule of law—to the extent that it prevails in China and to the extent that a North Korean with no exposure to such a concept is capable of understanding it—doesn't apply to North Korean refugees. If a woman has relatives in China, they often urge her, not without reason, to strike a bargain with a Chinese man who will feed and house her in exchange for her labor and sexual favors. If she contacts the police or other Chinese officials, she can expect worse treatment. If the police abide by the law, they will arrest her and send her back to North Korea. If they are corrupt, they will sell her to another bride broker.

Bang Mi-sun's story is typical. Bang Mi-sun crossed the Tumen River, motivated, she later said, by one thought: “I might find refuge in China.”
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Her husband had died of starvation in North Korea. Her elder daughter had disappeared, and her two younger children needed her help. She hoped to find work in China.

Instead, on the other side of the river, she found the police waiting for her. The Chinese police “were getting ready to apprehend me and send me back to North Korea,” she said, unless she agreed to be sold. Speaking at a press conference in Washington, D.C., she described what happened next: “My first buyer sold me to another buyer, and then that buyer sold me in turn to another buyer, each buyer for additional profit. “

“I was being sold like a beast,” she said. “I remember these Chinese brokers would call us, those who were being sold, ‘pigs.' Well, I was the best pig they had. I was sold at top price.” Her first husband
told her he paid 7,000 yuan for her—the equivalent of about $850. “He told me he would kill me if I did not listen to him.”

A few days after Bang Mi-sun started living with her new husband, she won a reprieve of sorts: Brokers abducted her and sold her to another man. “I found out that there are brokers who would take the people who had been sold and take them away and sell them again to a third party,” she said. “I never knew that this buying and selling of people existed. . . . I was sold again and again.”

After her last marriage, Bang Mi-sun was arrested by Chinese police and deported to North Korea. She was beaten and sent to a labor reeducation camp. She eventually escaped again to China and made her way to South Korea. At the Washington press conference, she stood on a chair, lifted up her skirt, and displayed the deep furrows in her thighs, scars of where she'd been tortured.

She asked, “Why do North Korean women have to be treated like pigs and sold like pigs and suffer these things?”

North Korean brides are “thrice victimized,” says Ambassador Mark Lagon, former director of the U.S. State Department's human-trafficking office. “They have fled starvation and human rights abuses in North Korea,” he notes. “They are subject to abuse as undocumented migrants in China. And if they are sent back to North Korea, they face severe punishment, even execution in some cases.”
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According to the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, which Lagon headed, more than eight hundred thousand people are trafficked worldwide across borders every year. The vast majority—80 percent—are women and girls. That is roughly the same percentage of North Korean refugees in China who are female, according to human rights groups.

Lagon describes the plight of North Korean women in China as different from that of trafficked women elsewhere in the world, or even in China, where Southeast Asian women also are sold as brides.
North Korean women in China experience the “usual vulnerabilities of undocumented migrants, who are subject to manipulation by employers, debt bondage, and so forth, worldwide,” he says. But China's treatment of North Korean women is worse. “There's a particular cocktail here of an insensitive and arguably cruel immigration policy in China that make them even more vulnerable.”

Lagon is referring to China's policy of treating trafficked North Korean women as criminals or deportable aliens, not as victims. Chinese law recognizes North Korean refugees only as illegal immigrants. There is no screening process to determine whether a woman is a victim of sex trafficking, that is, whether she has been forced into prostitution or marriage with a Chinese national. She has zero recourse under Chinese law.

Every North Korean bride I have interviewed used the words “marriage” and “husband” when describing her personal situation. That was true even if she had another husband and family back home in North Korea. But in the eyes of Chinese law, the living arrangement of a North Korean woman with a Chinese man has no legal status. The marriage cannot be registered with the Chinese government because the woman has no official identity papers. If a man tries to register his marriage, he runs the risk that his wife will be exposed as an illegal migrant and subject to arrest and repatriation. At the very least, the husband will open himself up to bribery from officials who want money in exchange for ignoring his wife's illegal status.

Like most of the Christians who are in the business of rescuing North Korean refugees, Steve Kim and 318 Partners rely on information from women who have escaped to seek out more people to help. Just as the widespread use of cellphones and the Internet has streamlined the export industry in China in the past decade, so, too, have
high-tech communications media streamlined the escape industry. A ticket on the new underground railroad often begins with a cellphone call.

After brides escape, “they tell us there are ten, fifteen more women like them in their village,” Kim says. “And then they call them.”

He lifts his hand to an ear, pretending to be a rescued North Korean woman making a phone call to a friend in China. “ ‘Yeah, I'm here. It's so-o-o good. Why don't you come?' ” The bride who has escaped then gives her friends in China Kim's phone number or the number of a colleague in Seoul.

“If they want, they contact us,” he says. “That's how it happens.”

The next step is a phone interview with Kim. Does the woman fully understand the risks of escape? Is she willing to take the chance that she could be arrested and repatriated? If she has children with her Chinese husband, is she prepared to leave them behind?

Some women decide not to leave. “Many women have adjusted to their new lives even though they were trafficked,” he says. They have enough to eat. Their living conditions are far better than anything they experienced in North Korea. Their neighbors help shield them from arrest when security officials come snooping.

“The husband is happy and they're not complaining,” Kim says. “They're taking it as destiny. They tell me, ‘Don't bother our family.' They are living peacefully.”

If a woman wants help, and Kim agrees to do so, he goes to work quickly. He figures out how much the rescue will cost and begins to organize his network on the new underground railroad. If the woman is still living with her Chinese husband, the first step will be to arrange for her to get to a secure location from which she can begin her journey.

Then he sends out a plea for money to his email list of supporters. Typical is an appeal from a January 2010 newsletter: “We have received another call for help from three trafficked North Korean
women in China,” the newsletter states. “They are all from the same hometown in North Korea. According to the older woman named Choi, they have escaped from the captors [and are] hiding in a northern city of Jilin province. We ask your support in prayers and financially.”
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The basement price of one of 318 Partners' rescues is $1,300. Most cost much more—$3,000 or above. Money is so tight that Kim sometimes asks the rescued women to pledge to pay back $1,000 of the costs once they get to Seoul and receive financial help from the South Korean government.

There is a crude justice in such financial accountings: $1,000 is also the approximate price of a North Korean bride.