North Korea has arguably the world’s most oppressively totalitarian government.  Under dictator Kim Jong-Il, citizens are forcibly isolated from the outside world and deprived of all human rights.  Those who manage to escape across the northern frontier into China often fare little better.  If discovered, they can be returned to North Korea where they face torture, imprisonment, or even summary execution.  But even those allowed to stay are often forced into prostitution or slavery.

Four Koreans spoke to the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus earlier this week.

The stories were filled with abuse by the Chinese government and human traffickers as well as gruesome torture by North Korean prison facilities upon the refugees’ forced repatriation.

Among the witnesses was the Rev. Phillip Buck, a prominent Korean-American pastor whose 10 years of humanitarian work among North Korean refugees in China has helped about 1,000 refugees and over 100 of them escape to South Korea.

Buck, who was born in North Korea but immigrated to the United States in 1982, recalled that many North Korean women refugees were abducted and trafficked in China. He told the story of one woman who was sold to a Chinese family where five brothers were not married and she was forced to become the sex slave of all five brothers.
. . .
“China has created the most horrific human rights tragedy occurring in the world today,” declared [Suzanne] Scholte [chairman of the North Korea Freedom Coalition]. “Over 80 percent of North Korean women are being trafficked – sold as wives, sold into brothels as sex slaves, while other refugees become slave laborers and children are orphaned and abandoned.”

The caucus also heard from, among others, a humanitarian South Korean businessman who helped North Korean refugees escape from China by boat.  He was caught by Chinese authorities and imprisoned for four years.

h/t: International Christian Concern

Previous related posts: