A female North Korean worker in China recently suffered an unwanted pregnancy after multiple sexual assaults by a male manager, a reporting partner in China told Daily NK last Thursday.
The North Korean woman is in her mid-20s and works at a contract manufacturing factory in Liaoning Province. She was allegedly sexually assaulted multiple times by a male cadre supervising workers at the factory, the reporting partner said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The alleged sexual assaults came to light when the woman suffered an unwanted pregnancy. The victim’s co-workers thought something was wrong when she could not eat properly and she kept slipping up at work. Ultimately, they learned everything that had happened when she received an abortion at a medical center.
The security guidance officer at the factory investigated what happened, but the perpetrator of the alleged sexual assaults paid the woman money to stay silent.
Some 80% to 90% of the North Korean workers sent to factories in China are women, while 5% to 10% are men. At these factories, two or three men often manage 200 or more female workers.
The mainly female workers remain confined to their workplaces and lodgings and receive everything through the cadres, including resolutions to their problems. This situation leaves them at high risk of sexual assault.
Moreover, the male cadres manage the female workers’ wages and Workers’ Party contributions, giving the male cadres a great deal of leverage that they often use to inflict sexual violence.
The women have nowhere to go to ask for help or report assaults, so when sexual assaults occur, most are never made known.
Since North Korea closed its border to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in January 2020, even if North Korean nationals commit crimes overseas, the North Korean authorities generally do not repatriate them right away.
Currently, North Korea has no system in place to investigate and punish perpetrators of crimes overseas, who are unlikely to face reinvestigation or trial for previously concluded matters even after they return home.
WOMEN WORKING AT RESTAURANTS AND KARAOKE CLUBS ALSO VICTIMIZED
According to Daily NK’s reporting partner, North Korean women working overseas frequently suffer sexual assaults at local restaurants and karaoke clubs as well.
North Korean women hired to work in restaurants or karaoke clubs operated with money from Chinese investors typically work in smaller groups than female workers at factories. This leaves them highly exposed to sexual assault by male North Korean cadres and their Chinese bosses because the workers are freer to come and go from their workplace.
The problem is that with no system to report or punish sexual assaults against workers dispatched overseas, such sexual assaults are now accepted as routine.
Male sexual predators appear to believe that they can just pay off North Korean women RMB 200 or 300 (USD 29 to 43) to sleep with them, and even some of the victims fail to recognize sexual harassment or sexual assault as a problem.
Moreover, since female workers and their male cadre handlers work within a military-like hierarchical relationship, women are unable to easily refuse advances by male superiors.
Lee Seung-ju, a profiler with the Transitional Justice Working Group, told Daily NK that North Korean women cannot easily make their voices heard because of the patriarchial nature of North Korean society.
“North Korean women working overseas have an even harder time saying anything when they are subject to power-based violence because their entire lives, including their wages, are under the authority of male managers,” he said.
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
Daily NK works with a network of reporting partners who live inside North Korea. Their identities remain anonymous due to security concerns. More information about Daily NK’s reporting partner network and information gathering activities can be found on our FAQ page here.
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