Current state of North Korean defector women and children in China

(Photo:NEWSis)

Recently, it has become increasingly more difficult to find North Korean defector women and children living in the Yan Bian region of China. This is because the number of people escaping from North Korea has sharply decreased. One reason for this decrease is North Korea and China’s cooperation to thoroughly seal off the borders between the two countries. Another is North Korea’s increased severity of punishment of those fleeing. A third reason is the improved standard of living in North Korea. People are not starving as they did in the past. China has placed barbed-wire fences on its borders as well as installed CCTV cameras. Phone calls reporting North Korean defectors by families living on the China-North Korea border have also increased. North Korea has strengthened its security at the border and has installed two layers of guard posts at strategic escape points. If a North Korean is arrested on their way to escape to China, they will automatically be dealt with as a pro-South Korea political criminal.

As the number of North Korean defector women has decreased, they are trafficked for drastically higher prices. Ten years ago, North Korean defector women were sold for an average of 3,000 Yuan (approximately 500,000 Korean won). Now, they are being sold for up to 20,000 Yuan, but are now very difficult to buy even at much higher prices.

However, there are those North Korean defector women who cannot escape from the evil hands of crime. In the mid to late 2000s, online chat rooms sprung up throughout Yan Bian. Criminals bought North Korean defector women, locked them up and forced them to appear naked in video chatting sessions. Once sold into one of these places, the women cannot escape and many are still locked up. This is the most serious problem concerning the human rights of North Korean defector women at the moment. Yet, as they are under the criminal organization network, it is very difficult to know their current situation or rescue them.

In the case of North Korean defector children, it is extremely rare for them to escape on their own. On the other hand, there are more than 10,000 children, who are the offspring of Chinese men in the countryside and the North Korean defector women sold to them. These children are posing a big problem. Either the mothers of these children have been arrested and sent to the North or in many cases have abandoned their “unwanted” child and run away. As these children were born out of wedlock, they cannot be registered in the Chinese family register and they are without a nationality. The children’s fathers have Chinese nationalities, but they cannot prove that their mothers are North Korean defectors in most cases. The Chinese government needs to actively reach out and help these children.