East Asia: Yeonmi Park
- Hayeon Kwak
- Jan 22
- 2 min read
Eastern Asia is not an exception when it comes to human trafficking. Among the Eastern Asian countries, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, known as North Korea, is the worst hotspot of human trafficking. The most common form of human trafficking is forced labour by the North Korean government; it is ironic that the government, whose task is to protect the people it represents, is the operator of human trafficking. Often, people in political prisons are forced to work for labour in detention, take on compulsory State-assigned jobs, and even get conscripted for military service. One survivor of a forced labour camp in North Korea shared that some women are sexually abused in the camp.
China, which is another country infamous for human trafficking, lies in a terrible position despite the government’s efforts to alleviate domestic human trafficking. The Chinese government has tried to raise awareness of human trafficking and cooperated with foreign law agencies to take action for anti-human trafficking. However, China does not possess an unbiased and fair position when it comes to the ethnicity of its people on this issue. According to the U.S. Department of State, the Chinese government's current policy or the pattern of widespread forced labour includes huge detentions of minority groups, demonstrating practices of forced labour that are highly similar to human trafficking.
Yeonmi Park
Yeonmi Park is a human rights activist and a North Korean defector. Born in North Korea, she escaped from North Korea to find freedom, which was never present in North Korea, when she was a teenager with her family through China, Mongolian Gobi desert, finally settling in South Korea. Although Yeonmi Park is mainly working for human rights, she confessed her experience of human trafficking during her escape from North Korea in her TED speech. During her process of arriving in South Korea, Yeonmi Park and her mom were sold by a Chinese human trafficker. Park said her mom sacrificed herself to be raped by the Chinese human trafficker and annunciated that many girls in North Korea are sold to human traffickers at a ridiculously cheap cost for sexual abuse. North Korea is a state where basic human rights are not guaranteed. Many of the people spoke out or did something outside of regulation by the North Korean dictatorial government, as her father was dragged away to a prison camp. Specifically, women and girls’ lives in North Korea are highly unprotected. Not only does the government control and restrict everything, but North Korea is stuck in the past, where gender norms do not change and women are still ignored. Throughout Park’s multiple states and ceaseless efforts to publish atrocities by the North Korean government and human traffickers, she succeeded in influencing people to be aware of this issue. For a globalized approach, Park is currently active in the US, speaking out for human rights for those in North Korea and for those who long for freedom.
Written by Haeum Lee
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