Dozens of women who fled regime say abuse from officials, police and even prosecutors is part of daily life
Women in North Korea are routinely subjected to sexual violence by government officials, prison guards, interrogators, police, prosecutors, and soldiers, according to a new report, with groping and unwanted advances a part of daily life for women working in the country’s burgeoning black markets.
The widespread nature of abuse by North Korea officials was documented in a new report by Human Rights Watch that interviewed 54 people who fled North Korea since 2011, the year Kim Jong-un came to power. It took more than two years amass the stories collected in the report, with subjects interviewed in countries across Asia.
Men in power operate with impunity and “when a guard or police officer ‘picks’ a woman, she has no choice but to comply with any demands he makes, whether for sex, money, or other favours”, the report said.
Human rights abuses in North Korea have been extensively documented and the United Nations estimates between 80,000 and 120,000 political prisoners are detained in four large political prison camps in North Korea.
A landmark UN report detailed cases of “extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation”.
But women remain particularly vulnerable in a country where the police, market inspectors and soldiers are predominantly male.
