Global slavery report slams North Korea

LONDON (AP) — Modern slavery is most prevalent in North Korea and other repressive regimes, but developed nations also bear responsibility for it because they import $350 billion worth of goods that are produced under suspicious circumstances, according to research released Thursday.

The Global Slavery Index estimates 40.3 million people worldwide were subjected to modern slavery in 2016, with the highest concentration in North Korea, where one in 10 people lived under such conditions.

“This index makes us visible,” North Korean defector Yeon-mi Park, who escaped to China where she was trafficked and forced into marriage, she said at a news conference at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Park, who is now studying at Columbia University in New York, urged people everywhere to help the millions of victims of modern slavery.

The report was compiled by the Walk Free Foundation, an anti-slavery campaign founded by Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest, who said at the New York press conference that “for the first time there is real hope we can end modern slavery.”

The goal of the index is to pressure governments and companies to do more to end modern slavery by providing hard data on the numbers of people involved and the impact it has around the world. For example, modern slavery in developing nations puts jobs at risk in the U.S. and Western Europe because domestic goods compete against imports produced through “exploitation of the worst kind,” Forrest told The Associated Press.

Modern slavery involves the use of threats, violence and deception to take away people’s ability to control their own bodies, to refuse certain kinds of work or to stop working altogether.

The report cites coal, cocoa, cotton, timber and fish as among the products that may be tainted by modern slavery.

In North Korea, coal exports are the area of greatest concern.

The index lists Eritrea, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Afghanistan, Mauritania, South Sudan, Pakistan, Cambodia and Iran as the worst offenders after North Korea.

Repressive regimes are of particular concern because their “populations are put to work to prop up the government,” according to the report.