North Korean defectors turn to online sex work

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Although some North Korean women who have defected and marry rural Chinese men take the risk of working outside the home, shuttling between cleaning and babysitting jobs or working behind the scenes in restaurants, an increasing number feel they have no choice but to try to make money behind closed doors.

That is where video chatting comes in. About one-fifth of the North Korean women living in hiding in China are involved in this kind of online sex work.

“If you’re working in a restaurant or outside, you run the risk of being asked for your papers by the police. So doing this work is safer and the money is better,” said Park a broker who works to get women out. “In the village where they lived, every North Korean woman does this. It’s so normal to be doing this.”

“These North Korean women in China faced a dire dilemma, either having to remain hidden and submit to this kind of sexual exploitation, or risk working outside of their residence with the very real possibility that Chinese authorities could arrest them at any time and force them back to North Korea,” said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch.

Suh was sold eight years ago to a man in northern China who, she said, treated her well — he beat her “only a few times.” But the arrival of their second child made a tough financial situation untenable. She heard about video chatting through a friend of a friend and began chatting with South Korean men at night when everyone in her house was asleep.

On her first day she earned $3. In her best week, she netted $120. A few months ago, Suh decided she couldn’t take it. “I wondered why I had to do this. I’m a human being, the same as everyone else,” Suh said, breaking down into heaving sobs. “I wanted to be a good mother, a strong mother for my daughters.”   Read more

North Korean women involved in online sex

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Sometimes the men just wanted to talk with the North Korean women. “Face cam,” it’s called. But most of the time, they wanted the other option: “body cam.”

Watching through a smartphone app, the men would ask the women, some of the unknown thousands of North Koreans sold to Chinese husbands and living secretly in northern China, to show their breasts or their backsides, to touch themselves or perform sex acts on one another.

Most of the time, the women did as requested. They needed the money — even if it amounted to only a few dollars a day.

“In the beginning, I didn’t think it was going to be a big deal. I thought it would be okay because I wasn’t actually sleeping with anyone,” said Suh, who had been one of the legions of North Korean women performing online sex work in back rooms in China. “But then I found out how many perverts there are out there.”

“There are some people who just want to look at your face, but the majority of them are there for their sexual desires,” Suh said, putting her head down so her long hair covered her cherubic face. “I felt so disgusting.”

Suh decided to try to leave China, along with the two others. They found out about Park and Kim Sung-eun, a pastor from the Caleb Mission, a church in South Korea that helps bring defectors to safety, and asked to be helped out. For the second time in their lives, they escaped, this time to a safe house in northern China, and from there they made the journey to the border, then walked to Laos.

[The Washington Post]

Escaping the ‘cruel, sad, and dark’ world of North Korea

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Grace Jo, a North Korean defector who now lives in Washington, D.C., shares her story:

“North Korea is very cruel, very sad, and very dark,” Grace said, recalling her days there. “It is a world completely without hope.”

Born in 1991 in Hamgyeong Province, Grace lived in the mountains with her mother, father, two older sisters, younger brother and grandmother. She lost more than half of her family before she left North Korea for good.

Her childhood was defined by a famine which killed hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, between 1994 and 1998. “We were always hungry and cold,” Grace explained, “My mother, father, and siblings were always out searching for food. … I went 10 days without any food. We could only drink cold water from the river,” she said. Had it not been for the generosity of a neighbor, Grace would not have survived.

To fight off starvation, Grace’s mother and father made several food runs to China. The first two times were successful, but everything went wrong during a third trip, when they were caught by border police. Her mother, who was pregnant at the time, was tortured in prison, an experience that crippled her permanently. Grace’s father died during his incarceration.

To care for the family, Grace’s oldest sister traveled to China to find food, but she disappeared. After recovering, Grace’s mother left Grace, her older sister Jinhye Jo, her younger brother and her new baby brother in the care of their grandmother and set out to look for her daughter in China.

“We did our best to take care of our new baby brother while our mother was gone, but we were unable to save him. He died after only two months,” Grace explained. Read more

Escaping the ‘cruel, sad, and dark’ world of North Korea – Part 2

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On her seventh birthday, Grace Jo crossed the Tumen River with her mother and sister and entered into China. Weak and malnourished, Grace’s eyes were opened to the world beyond her country’s borders. She saw a family with a pet dog that ate better than she ever had. “Even the animals here live better than we do,” Grace recalled thinking at the time.

Grace, her older sister, and her mother lived in China intermittently for 10 years. They were always on the run, hiding from the Chinese police. They also had to evade North Korean agents who had been dispatched to hunt down their family. They weren’t able to avoid capture; all three were repatriated multiple times.

After being caught and repatriated in 2001, young Grace spent many months in a North Korean prison facility. “The soldiers liked to kick and punch people. They liked to practice boxing on the prisoners,” Grace explained.

“From this moment on, you are no longer human beings, you will be treated like animals,” the North Korean soldiers barked.

“We could not look them in the eye. We had to stare at their feet. If we moved or looked up, they would punish all of us,” she said.

North Korean prisons are notoriously brutal, with some previously imprisoned defectors reporting seeing guards beat people mercilessly. Some said that the soldiers would sometimes attack pregnant women, kicking them in their stomachs repeatedly.

In this harsh and unforgiving environment, Grace was always terrified that she would never see her family again. Read more

Escaping the ‘cruel, sad, and dark’ world of North Korea – Part 3

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After bring caught defecting and sent to a North Korean prison, Grace Jo was eventually set free. She made her way back to China, where she was reunited with her mother and sister. The family met Korean-American missionary Pastor Phillip Buck who helped take care of them.

But they were caught again in 2005, and Grace spent a year in a Chinese prison. In 2006, the Chinese turned her and her mother and sister over to the North Koreans. They were held in the National Security Agency, where they were interrogated and tortured.

The North Koreans found out that they were Christian and knew Christian missionaries — crimes punishable by death in North Korea. To spare them, Buck paid $10,000 to North Korean security officers. The family was charged with lesser crimes and set free on the condition that they remain in North Korea.

They immediately fled the country to China, where they quickly applied for United Nations’ refugee status.

While waiting for approval, Grace and her family stayed in an apartment with around 20 other defectors in Beijing. There was a constant lingering fear among the residents that they would be sent back. Grace explained, “We couldn’t leave the house. Even though we had a kind of protected status, there was always the possibility that the Chinese police would grab us and send us back to North Korea.”

After receiving refugee status, Grace, Jinhye, and their mother came to the U.S. in 2008. Grace became a U.S. citizen in 2013.

[Daily Caller]

Diarrheal diseases have quadrupled since North Korean floods

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The number of children in North Korea suffering from diarrheal diseases has quadrupled since floods swept through the country’s northeast.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Friday the number of children under the age of 5 suffering from waterborne diseases in flood-hit regions is now four times the number it was a month ago in September, Voice of America reported. Severe acute malnutrition is also on the rise.

OCHA said the water and sanitation system of North Hamgyong Province was damaged during the massive flooding that took place from Aug. 29-Sept. 2. Contaminated water at wells and hand-pumps has affected a population of 600,000.

Clean water and sanitation is urgently needed to prevent the further spread of waterborne diseases, the U.N. agency said, adding 45 health clinics in the region have been damaged as a result of the floods. Medicine as well as medical equipment are in scarce supply.

Epidemics could continue to grow unless more action is taken, OCHA stated.

The U.N. agency said it has supplied dietary supplements for 50,000 children and lactating women, as well as providing canned goods and high-calorie biscuits for 140,000 flood victims.

[UPI]

A ‘balloon warrior’ subverts North Korea, thousands of leaflets at a time

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Lee Min-bok’s house, fashioned out of two shipping containers, is monitored by 12 police surveillance cameras. Dogs woof at any stranger walking up the dirt path. Plainclothes detectives check his mailbox and tag along wherever he goes to protect him from possible assassins sent by North Korea, which openly threatens to kill him.

balloon-warior-lee-min-bok-north-korean-defectorOn days when the wind blows to the north, Mr. Lee, 59, ventures out with his secondhand five-ton truck, hauling a large hydrogen tank to the border with North Korea, an hour’s drive away. There, he fills dozens of 23-foot and 39-foot barrel-shaped balloons with the gas and lets them drift away.

The balloons carry special payloads: radio sets, one-dollar bills, computer memory sticks and, above all, tens of thousands of leaflets bearing messages that Mr. Lee says will debunk the personality cult surrounding Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea.

His leaflets list the number of cars and other figures from South Korea’s vastly superior economy. It then asks North Koreans to ask ethnic Koreans from China, who often visit their country, whether those figures are correct. It also urges them to ask front-line soldiers to confirm that the South Korean fences on the border are awash with blinding lights at night while the energy-starved North is buried in darkness.

Sailing 9,800 to 16,400 feet above sea level, Mr. Lee’s balloons waft across the world’s most heavily guarded border, high enough that North Korean soldiers have little chance of shooting them down. Then his patented “timer” devices click, unfastening vinyl bundles. Leaflets fall out like snowflakes over the North, where Mr. Kim struggles to keep his people under a total information blackout, blocking the internet and prefixing all radio and TV sets to receive only his government’s propaganda-filled broadcasts.

In South Korea, there are 50 “balloon warriors,” many of them defectors from the North like Mr. Lee, who seek to breach the wall with leaflets. Mr. Lee is their godfather. When he started floating large balloons in 2005, with others following suit, he received credit — and blame — for reigniting the leaflet battle. Lee launches between 700 and 1,500 balloons a year, each carrying 30,000 to 60,000 leaflets.

Sending balloons is Mr. Lee’s full-time job. He finances his operation with cash he earns from lectures he gives at churches and elsewhere. Christians also donate, asking him to drop small Bibles and food into the North. A Japanese group contributes with the understanding he will send leaflets urging North Koreans to help find the whereabouts of dozens of Japanese believed to have been abducted to the North.

In 2011, a man was arrested on a charge of plotting to assassinate a balloon activist at the behest of North Korea. Three years later, the North directed anti-aircraft fire into the South Korean sky, trying to down one of Mr. Lee’s balloons. This year, it began retaliating in kind, floating to the South leaflets that called President Park Geun-hye a snake and a prostitute.

[New York Times]

North Korea ‘purges’ top official amid spike in high-level defections

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North Korea has purged a vice foreign minister, punishing the 72-year-old and his family with farm work, South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said. Vice Minister Kung Sok Ung “took responsibility for the management of the embassies in the European region and was purged.”

The daily reports Kung Sok Ung, 72, and four other ranking officials in charge of European affairs were expelled from Pyongyang on the orders of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. It said Kung oversaw relations with Russia and Europe for nearly 20 years.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye recently said, “While the defections by North Korean elites, as well as regular citizens, are on the rise, the motivations for their defections have become varied, with some fleeing their country with a sense of despair about lack of their own prospects or for their children’s future,” Park said.

Before 2001, nearly 70 percent of those fleeing North Korea cited hunger, but now almost 88 percent cite non-economic reasons such as surveillance and fear, the news agency said.

Among those now fleeing to freedom are significant numbers of senior officials. “Since the execution of Kim’s uncle Jang Song Thaek in 2013, defections by the privileged class have risen due to the North’s leader’s reign of terror,” Yonhap on Sunday quoted Sohn Kwang-joo, who heads the South’s defector resettlement agency, as saying.

On Oct. 5, Japan was said to be handling a request for asylum by a senior North Korean official in Beijing. Tokyo denied the reports, while South Korean media said the official’s final destination was likely to be Seoul.

Pyongyang is reported to have executed more than 100 dissenting state, party and military officials since Kim came to power in late 2011.

[Japan Times]

North Korean spy agency official defected to S. Korea last year

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A senior official at North Korea’s spy agency defected to South Korea last year, a source said Wednesday.

The unidentified official who worked for the Ministry of State Security escaped to the South in an unusual defection by a North Korean in charge of gathering intelligence and cracking down on ordinary people.

The source said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is believed to have been upset by the growing number of elite members defecting.

[Yonhap]

Changing the stereotypes of North Korean defectors

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A trendy haircut, eyebrow piercings and a tattoo sleeve on his arm — nothing about online personality Lee Pyung’s current appearance betrays the fact he was born under a totalitarian regime. But he was, Lee reveals in his live webcast series, 23 years ago in the city of Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province, North Korea.

Lee is one of a handful of 20- and 30-something North Korean defectors who have recently begun telling their stories on Afreeca, an online streaming platform where broadcasters earn money according to the number of viewers. Lee’s live streams tell candid stories of life above the peninsula’s 38th parallel and aim to “relate to young people.”

“South Koreans’ perceptions of North Korea are a lot different from what I know about the country,” said Lee in a webcast last month, also uploaded to YouTube. He has received all sorts of questions from viewers, including “Do North Koreans really eat human flesh?” and “Is everybody trained to be a spy?” which he’s called “outrageous.”

Lee began streaming online because he “wanted to change the stereotypes of North Korean defectors, especially among the younger South Korean generation who are less familiar with North Korea.”

He hated that many South Koreans seemed prejudiced against defectors, viewing them as “poor” or “fanatical communists.”

The young escapee’s stories seem to have found an audience. Since his online debut in May, Lee has made on average 5 million won ($4,460) per month, with last month’s earnings soaring much higher. His YouTube video detailing how he escaped has attracted over 1 million views. He works out of a streaming studio, equipped with a computer, camera and microphone. Read more