Sexual Abusers In N. Korea

SEOUL, South Korea — Since Kim Jong-un took power in 2011, North Korea has eased restrictions on markets, allowing many families to make the bulk of their earnings from such economic activity.

But the markets have a dark side: a prey- and- predator relationship between the mostly female traders and male officials, Human Rights Watch said in a new report. “Having sex with men who have power over you, or letting them touch all over your body, is a necessity to survive,” a former trader in her 20s told the rights group.

Human Rights Watch said it interviewed 29 women who fled North Korea after Mr. Kim took power, and who agreed to discuss the abuse they suffered. They used pseudonyms to protect their privacy and family members.

Since famine devastated their country in the 1990s, 32,000 North Koreans have fled to South Korea, most of them women. Many reported widespread sexual violence in their home country. In 2014, a United Nations commission documented systemic human rights violations in the North, including sexual violence. The Human Rights Watch report reinforced those findings, focusing exclusively on sexual abuse by men in official power.

The former trader in her 20s said she was sexually assaulted several times by police officials and train inspectors between 2010 and 2014, when she fled. Resisting could mean traders lose their main source of income and jeopardize their families’ survival. The officials could declare the women’s travel and trading illegal, confiscate their goods and send them to prison, the report said.

“Market guards or police officials would ask me to follow them to an empty room outside the market, or some other place they’d pick,” said a former trader in her 40s. “They consider us toys.”

The women interviewed said they seldom reported the crimes for fear of reprisal, and because of widespread stigma attached to rape victims. The coerced sex has become so common that the men don’t think their actions are wrong, and the women have come to accept it, some said.

Also vulnerable are women who enter China illegally to find work or smuggle goods. When they are caught and repatriated, they are exposed to widespread abuse in holding centers and prisons, according to Human Rights Watch.

A former inmate said: “The idea that sexual violence is wrong, that it would not be my fault, that some ‘ law person’ could be there to try to protect me could have never even occurred to me while living in North Korea.”