Denouncing Human Trafficking in China: North Korean Women's Memoirs as Evidence

Notes

1. As stated in paragraph 94 of Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR's 1979) Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status Under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, The requirement that a person must be outside his country to be a refugee does not mean that he must necessarily have left that country illegally, or even that he must have left it on account of well-founded fear. He may have decided to ask for recognition of his refugee status after having already been abroad for some time. A person who was not a refugee when he left his country, but who becomes a refugee at a later date, is called a refugee “sur place”. (emphasis in original)

2. For that reason, I have decided to leave out of the present study other works, such as Barbara Demick's (2009) influential Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea as it consists of anonymized interviews. I have also left aside the multiple memoirs written by North Korean male refugees (Harden 2012; Jang 2014; Kang and Rigoulot 2001; J. Kim and Suk-Young 2009), as they would only provide second-hand testimony, if at all, on the issue of human trafficking and sexual slavery.

3. See full text in Ishay (1997: 408–410). Article 3: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person” (Ishay 1997: 408). Article 4: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms” (Ishay 1997: 408). Article 5: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” (Ishay 1997: 408–409). Article 9: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile” (Ishay 1997: 409). Article 13: (a): “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state” (Ishay 1997: 409); (b): “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country” (Ishay 1997: 409). Article 16: (a): “Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution” (Ishay 1997: 410); (b): “Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses” (Ishay 1997: 410).

4. As stated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (OHCHR 1989), three articles stand out:Article 29:(b) “The development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and for the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations”.Article 34: “States Parties undertake to protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse.For these purposes, States Parties shall in particular take all appropriate national, bilateral and multilateral measures to prevent:The inducement or coercion of a child to engage in any unlawful sexual activity;The exploitative use of children in prostitution or other unlawful sexual practices;The exploitative use of children in pornographic performances and materials”.Article 35: “States Parties shall take all appropriate national, bilateral and multilateral measures to prevent the abduction of, the sale of or traffic in children for any purpose or in any form”.