North Korean soldiers patrol the border with the Chinese city of Dandong.

(AFP file photo)

[Compilation of Guan Shuping/Comprehensive Report] The international human rights law firm "Global Rights Compliance (Global Rights Compliance)" released a report stating that tens of thousands of North Korean women escaped from North Korea, but were trapped in China's border with North Korea. Becoming a victim of the sex trafficking industry, this situation has intensified after the new coronavirus epidemic, and the estimated number of victims is more than double the 100,000 previously estimated by the United Nations.

The British "Telegraph" reported on the 24th that the "Global Rights Compliance Association" pointed out in this report that the number of North Korean refugees forced into the $105 million annual profit sex and bride trafficking industry is increasing, and they have fled Pyongyang. The government rules but is stuck on the Chinese border, which the report calls China's "red zone" and calls for a full international investigation into the urgent and worsening human rights crisis affecting vulnerable North Korean female refugees.

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Sofia Evangelou, chief North Korean legal adviser of the association, said that due to China's blockade of the border during the epidemic, these North Koreans could not escape, and related services were stopped. The epidemic also contributed to the "black hole" of information in the "red zone", more North Korean women are victims of China's sex slavery industry.

She said it was impossible to verify the exact number, but researchers analyzed evidence that the human rights crisis in China had more than doubled the number of North Korean refugees who had been victims of the previous U.N. estimate of about 100,000.

About 70 percent of those who fled North Korea are believed to be women, whose arduous journey across the border puts them at risk of exploitation by people smugglers.

Many were forced to become sex slaves within a year of leaving their hometowns, but they dared not escape for fear of being arrested by the Chinese government and deported back to North Korea.

A North Korean woman who was sold to Yanbian in Northeast China told investigators of the North Korean Human Rights Database (NKDB) that she was sold to a Chinese man, “We lived together for a year, and we couldn’t have children, so he just Hit me, kicked me, kicked my head a lot. I'm depressed now."

Another captured North Korean refugee recounted her horrific experience of being sexually assaulted by the camp manager in a Chinese police detention camp, "He ordered me to take off my pants, wash my private parts, and ordered me to lie down naked, and I refused He did that and he had sex,” she said. “I felt so ashamed, where (how) could I report it?”

Evanglu said the international community must stand up against these atrocities and work together to ensure that the rights of these women are protected. "A comprehensive international investigation is urgently needed." She urged governments to press China to use refugees, not stowaways. , for those fleeing North Korea.