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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Nork Bride Trafficking: When Escape Becomes Bondage |
| 2009-05-09 |
| The translator could never capture the experience behind Young-Ae Kim's emotional words, but he tried. "She was raised with the idea that you have one lasting marriage -- never did she imagine that she would be married three times by the age of 30, and treated like an animal." North Korean defector Young-Ae Kim told her story publically on April 29, along with Mi-Sun Bang, another woman whose account bears tragic resemblance to hers. Both women told reporters at the National Press Club a story that is becoming all too common among North Korean women. Both women were victims of "Bride Trafficking" -- being bought and sold as wives for single Chinese men along the border between North Korea and China. Mark Lagon, former U.S. Ambassador at Large for Combating Trafficking and now executive director of the Polaris Project on Human Trafficking, says that these women are "thrice victimized" -- starved in North Korea, sexually exploited once they escape to China and tortured if they are repatriated to their home country. |
| Posted by:Steve White |