Memoir delivers cries for help from N. Korean women trapped in sex slavery in China

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Korean-Canadian author-filmmaker Sylvia Yu Friedman tells stories of women sold to Chinese farmers, coerced into prostitution in Asia

By Kang Hyun-kyung

Every year, an unspecified number of North Koreans risk their lives for the chance of a better life outside the impoverished nation. They secretly cross the border to arrive in China, hoping to go to a third country for a new life free of fear and starvation. If caught, they must pay the price: they may be executed or sent to labor camps notorious for their appalling human rights conditions.

For some, particularly women, their audacious decisions to escape to China are based on false promises. They are lured by human traffickers to cross the border for "jobs."

Once arriving in China, their lives are no longer under their control. They may be raped by traffickers, who are Chinese or ethnic Koreans who were born and raised in China, before they are sold to poor, older Chinese farmers. Some are forced into prostitution or to perform online pornography. Scared by death threats or potential harm to their family members left behind in the North, they find it impossible to end the sexual bondage by themselves.

Sylvia Yu Friedman / Courtesy of Sylvia Yu Friedman

Sylvia Yu Friedman, an award-winning filmmaker and investigative journalist who chronicled this modern-day sexual slavery in Asia in a documentary series, raised fresh worries about the ramifications of such enslavement: the traumas of victims' lives are passed down onto their children.

"There are thousands of children of North Korean mothers and Chinese fathers. Hundreds, if not thousands, of these children are abandoned by their mothers if they escape to a third country like South Korea, or if they are sold again to another husband," she said.

Friedman recently released a book titled, "A Long Road to Justice: Stories from the Frontlines in Asia," published by Penguin Random House. The memoir is her personal account of the stories of these women who were deceived into leaving their homes for other countries in Asia, including China and Hong Kong, for jobs, but ended up getting trapped in sex slavery.

Her documentary project led her to meet a wide range of people involved in contemporary sex trafficking, including smugglers, human traffickers and their victims, as well as frontline humanitarian workers who are trying to rescue victims.

The Korean-Canadian author and journalist came to live with the piercing pleas of those women, after interviewing several North Korean women who were sold to Chinese farmers, survivors of Japan's war-time system of sex slavery, and African and Asian women who were coerced into prostitution in Hong Kong's red-light district.

"A Long Road to Justice" by Sylvia Yu Friedman

Her memoir unveils the tragic realities of poverty-driven sex slavery.

"Only 5 percent of people who have been forced into slavery are kidnapped. Most people are trafficked through deception: they were in dire poverty and dream of a better life," her book reads. Some poor parents sold their daughters to traffickers for money, she said, citing a humanitarian worker.

The sexual enslavement of North Korean women in China, which involves Korean traffickers in China, is a chilling reminder for Friedman of Korea's tragic past during World War II.

"It's a wicked cycle repeating in a way, since Korean women were dragged as wianbu or comfort women to China and all over the Asia Pacific on the frontlines of war to comfort the Japanese soldiers before and during World War II," she said. "There were Korean brokers and collaborators involved in recruiting young Korean women as comfort women and the same type of opportunists today deceive and lure vulnerable North Korean women into bride trafficking and online pornography in China."

Friedman said that the shock and sadness that gripped her back in 2007 during her field trip to China's northeast to interview several North Korean women are still fresh.

"I'll never forget sitting with North Korean women in the homes of their poor Chinese husbands," she said. "They looked beyond depressed, in quiet despair and shame ― barely whispering responses to my probing questions. I had never felt more helpless and sad for them and saddened for our divided peninsula."

Amid the deep frustration that came from her realization that there was little she could do for these women, she said that she was relieved to find there are groups of humanitarian workers who pursue every possible means to rescue the victims. Their heroic actions have helped save many.

She called the frontline humanitarian workers "unsung heroes."

"Frontline workers and justice missionaries who risk their lives to go into some of the darkest places on Earth to help suffering girls and women in slavery and forced prostitution are the hidden unsung heroes ― they are transforming one life at a time," she said.

Friedman said that she felt the urge to release a memoir about her experiences with those women to let the international community know about their need for help and to take coordinated action to stop such contemporary sex slavery.

"My hope is that we professionals, especially women, will step up and volunteer to help our sisters and daughters who are trapped and languishing in modern-day sex trafficking," she said. "It's easy to get discouraged when you only see the big picture of 4.8 million girl and women victims in slavery globally. That's why I wrote my memoir about my personal journey to interview and document the personal stories of survivors and victims across Asia, to spur more people on to help and get involved in global volunteerism (Betheherocampaign.com)."

She will continue her campaign to raise international awareness of the issue through a film project she is currently working on; a feature film based on her book, telling the world these stories.