Antislavery Usable Past

Jeong Soo-Ok

2007 (Narrative date)

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) is a source country for men, women and children who are subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking. Government oppression in the DPRK prompts many North Koreans to flee the country in ways that make them vulnerable to human trafficking in destination countries. Many of the estimated 10 000 North Korean women and girls who have migrated illegally to China to flee abuse and human rights violation are particularly vulnerable to trafficking. Some lure, drug, detain or kidnap North Korean women on their arrival, others offer jobs but subsequently force the women into prostitution, domestic service, or forced marriage. If found, Chinese authorities often repatriate victims back to the DPRK where they are subjected to harsh punishment including forced labour in labour camps or death.

Jeong Soo-Ok, travelled to China after she was told she could make money there, However, upon arrival she was taken to a man’s house and then sold in to prostitution.

https://www.rfa.org/english/features/women/witow_nkorea-20070221.html?searchterm:utf8:ustring=Human+Trafficking

A woman from our village, who said she’d been to China, told me that we could make some money there, so I followed her and crossed the Tumen River, and before I even knew it, I was taken to a man’s house. The woman from our village told me and others who had been brought there not to make a sound. They gave us a new change of clothes and loaded us into a car. We didn’t know who the owner of that house was, we didn’t know who the person accompanying us was, We had no idea what was happening… Even now, I don’t know if it was then that we were on our way to being sold. Thinking of the way they spoke Korean, I think those people were Korean Chinese.

I was sold to an entertainment establishment… I was forced to see perverse customers, who put their lit cigarettes on my abdomen, hand, or breasts… The owner locked me up in a basement.

He hits me every day, for any trivial reason. It’s not that I want to live here, but I have nowhere else to go. I’ve tried escaping twice; I was caught and beaten senseless.

Copyright © 1998-2016, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036.

Country

Theme

Sexual exploitation

Type

Narrative

Tags

VOICES: Narratives by Survivors of Modern Slavery

This is the world's largest archive of modern slavery survivor narratives. Across more than a million words spoken or written by survivors of modern slavery, we can see why slavery persists in particular hotspots, analyse patterns in trafficking routes, identify vulnerabilities, understand more about the challenges survivors face in liberation, and discover new antislavery solutions. These narratives offer the chance to systematically design new antislavery strategies based on the experiences, ideas and solutions of enslaved people themselves.

The database is searchable by country, name, theme, and narrative date. Narratives can be viewed in list or map form. A short introduction provides context to each narrative. Narrative provenance appears after the main narrative text.

For ideas on how to use this database, please see our accompanying guide.

Project Lead: Zoe Trodd. Team Members: Andrea Nicholson, Lauren Eglen, Rosemary Pearce, Olivia Wright.

Project Funders: AHRC Antislavery Usable Past grant (2014-19), ESRC/AHRC PaCCS Modern Slavery: Meaning and Measurement grant (2016-19), and AHRC-GCRF Antislavery Knowledge Network grant (2017-2021).

For any queries about the collection please contact: rightslab@nottingham.ac.uk. If you wish to cite a particular narrative, please acknowledge the survivor’s name, the provenance of the narrative and cite: Voices Database, the Rights Lab, University of Nottingham.

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