Beijing 'actively enables' trafficking of North Korean women, girls: rights groups

This April 15, 2019 photo shows a woman wiping tears from her face during an event marking the anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-sung, founder of North Korea, in Pyongyang. AFP-Yonhap

Activists call on China to fulfill its promise to protect victims ahead of UN review

By Jung Min-ho

Beijing vowed to take all measures necessary to combat the crime of human trafficking at its second and third cycle of Universal Periodic Reviews (UPR), a U.N. peer-review of the human rights records of all member states, held in 2013 and 2018 respectively.

But after a decade of inattention, if not deliberate ignorance on the part of Chinese authorities, North Korean women and girls remain easy targets of human traffickers resulting in them frequently becoming victims of various crimes including sexual extortion.

Ahead of China's fourth UPR cycle, expected to be held early next year, human rights groups have called for the country to fulfill its own promise to better protect North Korean escapees. In a joint statement sent to U.N. member states, they also urged governments around the world, including South Korea, to raise their voice over the issue at the upcoming session.

"China actively enables and facilitates the widespread and systematic trafficking of women and girls from North Korea through its policy of forcibly repatriating them to North Korea where they are subjected to torture, sexual and gender-based violence, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance and even execution and forcible abortions," Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR) and Transitional Justice Working Group said in that statement.

"The (Chinese) government must acknowledge the causal links between its refoulement policy and human trafficking."

Beijing has claimed that those who come to China for economic reasons do not qualify as refugees. It categorically treats all undocumented North Koreans as illegal migrants. But not all North Koreans, particularly women and girls, voluntarily cross the border, Lee Ji-yoon, a program manager at NKHR, told The Korea Times on Thursday.

"A significant number of North Korean women in border areas have been trafficked to China against their will or even without their knowledge," she said.

One victim told the NKHR that she fell asleep after eating an apple given to her by an old friend, only to find herself in China the next day being told that she was being sold to a man who "couldn't get married." This was devastating for the victim, who was going to get married to her longtime boyfriend. Such horrendous stories of forced marriage are not uncommon, human rights activists said.

"Many trafficked North Korean women are sold to rural families with a son that has not been able to find a bride and who desire unpaid labor and the continuation of their family line. The husbands, their families, their relatives and villagers continue the trafficking commenced by traffickers when they receive and detain women, fully aware that the trafficked woman has no safe refuge in China, no language skills and no money to escape," the statement says.

This June 19, 2019 photo shows North Korean and Chinese flags flying in Kim Il-sung square in Pyongyang, North Korea. AFP-Yonhap

Such criminal practices have created another vulnerable group in China ― the tens of thousands of children born to North Korean mothers ― as the union of a Chinese national with a North Korean national who is illegally residing in the country is not legally recognized under Chinese regulations.

"These children are often deprived of their rights to birth registration, nationality, education and health care because their birth cannot be registered without exposing the mother to the risk of refoulement by China. The constant threat of the mother's refoulement to the DPRK (North Korea) results in separation of children from mothers," the statement says.

This complex international human rights issue is only expected to worsen unless China starts to confront it. The first necessary step is to collect data, including how many undocumented North Korean escapees have been deported or granted refugee status in China, if there are any cases of the latter, rights advocates said.

After reviewing the documents released by NGOs, the Chinese government will issue its own report on the issue before its fourth UPR cycle, where it will respond to official inquiries and comments from the governments of other member states.