Lives for Sale: Personal Accounts of Women Fleeing North Korea to China

This report calls the world's attention to the suffering of North Korean women who have become the victims of trafficking and forced marriages after escaping their country to seek a new life in China. Seventy-seven interviews with North Korean women living in China yield 52 personal accounts--life stories of women who leave their home country for survival and safety only to be purchased by Chinese men who abuse and exploit them in China. In spite of finding places to live, North Korean women enter a maze of entrapping political and social difficulties that threaten not just the North Korean women themselves but also their children. The Chinese government defines them as "illegal economic migrants" and sends them back to North Korea where they are punished in prison camps and detention facilities. Lee Hae-young, a dedicated human rights activist, interviewed North Korean women through a series of trips to China, vividly illustrating how a combination of policy and practices on both sides of the border has created an ever widening web of exploitation and degradation of vulnerable women and their children. As troubling as the testimony of these eyewitnesses is, they are among the most fortunate women of North Korea, who have survived the North Korean famine and the perilous road of defection.