Mick Hartley

In the Sunday Times magazine today there's an interview, by Sungju Lee and Susan McClelland, with a South Korean man who's dedicated his life to helping North Korean defectors….North Korea’s Schindler: meet the man who saved more than 3,000 defectors. He's known as "Superman".

It's behind the Times paywall, but there's too much for me to copy it all here. This is an interesting point, though, and perhaps one that's not fully appreciated – the appalling treatment of North Korean women in China:

China’s three-decade-long one-child policy has resulted in many families abandoning their daughters. Officially, China claims that its male to female ratio today is about equal, but unofficially there is an imbalance. Chinese men have difficulty finding brides, particularly in remote areas. North Korean women have filled this demand. Many are recruited in their North Korean cities and villages by other women, sometimes even relatives, and agree to be sold to Chinese men as wives, believing that they will have better lives and be able to support their families back home. What the women don’t know until it’s too late is that their marriages are illegal. The women are nothing more than concubines. They have no legal rights. Children born from these marriages are not considered Chinese citizens and have no access to medical care or schooling. The women’s Chinese husbands force them to abort foetuses. Knowing their lives are at risk if they remain in China, many women are desperate to escape to Thailand and then South Korea. When they do, though, the journeys are often too perilous for the children to come. They get left behind with a promise that one day the mother will return and take them to a better life.

“About 75% of the North Koreans in South Korea today are women,” says Michael Glendinning of the UK-based advocacy group European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea. “Of these, a majority have experienced gender-based violence, including rape, sex trafficking and forced marriages.”

Jihyun Park, a Manchester mother and North Korean activist, was in an abusive relationship with a Chinese man for more than six years before she managed to escape. “When I went to China in 1998, I was told that if I didn’t marry the Chinese man, I couldn’t stay,” she says. “We ladies agree because life in North Korea is so unbearable. We gamble, hoping these marriages will be the lesser of two evils.

The North Korean woman becomes for the man his agricultural worker, domestic worker and sex toy, always threatened that if she doesn’t comply, he will report her to the police and have her deported.”

One of the man's goals is to put pressure on China to stop deporting the defectors back to North Korea – to treat them as refugees rather than economic migrants.

In our most recent interview, Superman explains why it is time to disclose his endeavours. “I want my story to be known now, because my story is the story of North Korean defectors. No one seems to be hearing the voices of those most affected by international sanctions and North Korea’s policies of pursuing militarisation over the wellbeing of its people. Right now, we have the North Koreans exploiting the Winter Olympics, presenting themselves as a peaceful regime. But there are two North Korean families with children under arrest right now in China. While we’re celebrating the Olympic games, these families face repatriation and prison. I hope that the international community puts pressure on China to stop this deportation. I hope we start recognising North Koreans as refugees in need of our support. Maybe if I can shout loud enough, the world will start to listen.”