LONDON - Thousands of North Korean women and girls - some as young as nine - are being trafficked into sexual slavery in China as they try to flee poverty and oppression in their homeland, experts on the reclusive state said on Monday May An estimated 60 per cent of North Korean girls and women in China are trafficked into the sex trade, according to the report to be launched at an event at Britain's Parliament on Monday.
Nearly half are pressed into prostitution, about a third sold into marriage and most others pushed into cyber sex, researchers said. No one at the Chinese embassy in London was immediately available for comment. Gathering information in North Korea is notoriously difficult. Many North Koreans are enslaved in brothels in districts in north-east China with large migrant worker populations, the report said. Trafficking survivors said prostitutes in Shanghai were branded with tattoos such as lions and butterflies to show ownership and deter abductions by rivals.
Read also Pakistan busts prostitution ring that sent young women to China. Girls and women enslaved in cyber sex dens are usually aged between 12 and 29, but sometimes younger, the report said. They are forced to perform sex acts or sexually assaulted in front of webcams. One woman, referred to as Ms Choi, told how she was taken to an apartment where she was shocked to see pre-pubescent girls.
Four men When the third man began raping me I was bleeding I cannot remember any more. The report said women forced into marriage were mostly sold in rural areas for 1, to 50, yuan, and were raped and abused by their husbands. China's policy of detaining and repatriating North Koreans forces them to live in the shadows, placing them at high risk of exploitation, Ms Yoon said. Some are sold by policemen after arrest, the report said, while others are duped by traffickers offering to get them to countries where they can claim asylum.
Abductions are also common. Researchers said some trafficking networks stretched into North Korea, where "sub-brokers" scour markets, villages and transport hubs for destitute-looking girls to fulfil orders from Chinese pimps and madams.
