Traffickers use drugs on North Korean ‘brides’ in China

We’ve reported extensively on the trafficking of North Korean women into China, where men abound, women are scarce, and the black-market trade in wives often takes a grim and grisly turn. But here’s a new angle, unearthed by RFA’s Korean service: The traffickers, taking a page from pimps in the West, are using addictive drugs to keep their women pliable. “Brokers force North Korean women defectors to take illegal drugs,” said a North Korean woman who defected to China in search of a better life, only to be passed from human smugglers to bride traffickers. “All of them end up shooting up drugs,” the woman, identified only by her surname, Lee, told RFA’s Korean service. “The same happened to me. The reason why the brokers do that is that they are afraid that we might get scared and resist, and that is why they give us drugs, to break our will,” she said.

“Before I was sold as a bride to a Chinese man in that poor village, the brokers kept pushing the drugs on me, and later on I had a very hard time recovering from my addiction,” said Ms. Lee, speaking in the northeastern Chinese city of Dandong, which borders North Korea. “For a long time, because of my previous drug addiction, I got the shakes, and I felt nauseated and confused every morning. I can still feel the side effects of that addiction,” said Lee, who is in her mid-30s and now works as a waitress in downtown Dandong.

According to a series of defector interviewed by RFA, North Korean women defecting to China need the assistance of “brokers,” who often inflict tremendous suffering upon them, exposing them to illegal drugs and handing them over to human-trafficking rings.

Lee said the cost of her defection from the southern part of North Korea to China, through Hweryong in North Korea’s Hamkyong province, was about U.S.$600.

“Money is absolutely necessary if one is considering defection. Every move along the path of defection requires money,” Lee added. “I was deceived by brokers in Hweryong and sold as a bride, just like a commodity, plain and simple. I still find it hard to comprehend how I ended up in that Chinese village. It was a village more destitute than even the poorest of North Korean rural areas. Later on, I managed to escape.”

Thousands of North Korean women are believed to have been sold as “brides” to Chinese men, who often put them to backbreaking labor and subject them to constant fear, physical assault, and sexual abuse. Most women trafficked in China come from areas of North Korea close to the Chinese border, such as Chagang, Northern Hamgyong, a Yanggang provinces. Often they were already extremely poor and socially marginalized—itinerant peddlers or street children.

According to the victims, North Korean women aged 17 to 40 are trafficked in China, and the men who buy them are Chinese nationals aged between 37 and 58. They said a North Korean bride could fetch between 2,000 yuan (U.S. $260) and 20,000 yuan (U.S.$2,600), depending on her age and appearance.

The traffickers, mostly ethnic Korean Chinese citizens, operate a well-honed system to bring the women to China, consisting of scouts, distributors, brokers, and transporters. The scouts identify vulnerable women and lure them into crossing the Chinese border with promises of a well-paid job.