Introduction

As discussed in Chapter 1, testimonies provided by those who have fled North Korea have exposed a plethora of human rights abuses against women, both within North Korea and in China, as well as during the process of either crossing the border to China or being repatriated to the North. The life history interview data I collected revealed a continuous cycle of appalling maltreatment of women beyond the physical boundaries of the regime. Drawing on these findings, this chapter examines the human rights abuses experienced by North Korean women both inside and outside the regime. Topics that I discuss are: domestic violence; sexual harassment in the workplace; women’s hygiene and health issues; human trafficking and smuggling to China; and gender-based violence against women during the process of forced deportation and in DPRK prisons.

These topic areas have previously been investigated and widely debated by scholars and human rights organizations. While these studies have revealed a range of gender-based rights violations faced by North Korean women inside the DPRK and China, most of the focus has been on women’s experiences within a particular country: for example, gender issues in the DPRK (Lim, 2005; Jung and Dalton, 2006; Kang, 2008; Park, 2010; Park, 2011; Haggard and Noland, 2012; Hosaniak, 2013; Kim, 2014; Eom and Kim, 2016; Gooptar, 2017; Yang, 2018; Cho et al, 2020); women’s experiences during the process of migration to China and/or in China (Charny, 2004; Lankov, 2004; Muico, 2005; CRS, 2007; Kim et al, 2009; Chang et al, 2008; Choi, 2014; Kook, 2018; Garcia, 2019); and/or their treatment upon repatriation to the DPRK (Charny, 2004; Muico, 2005; Yang, 2018). By investigating North Korean women’s gendered experiences using a circular framework between North Korea, China and back to North Korea, this chapter seeks to bring together these debates and examine a common thread interwoven across the lives of these women throughout their circular movements. It does so while applying critical feminist perspectives on gender, human smuggling/trafficking and agency/victimhood.