Seven days a week, she had to sit at a computer from noon to 5am, performing sex acts before a webcam for male clients, mostly from South Korea. When they failed, they were slapped, kicked and denied food. Each year, human smugglers take thousands of women seeking to flee North Korea, promising them jobs in China, according to human rights groups and trafficking survivors.
But once in China, many of the women are sold to unmarried men in rural towns or to pimps for exploitation in brothels and cybersex dens. If they are caught running away from traffickers, China sends them back to North Korea, where they face torture and incarceration in labour camps. With nowhere to turn for help in China, they remain trapped in sex slavery.
An estimated 60 per cent of female North Korean refugees in China are trafficked into the sex trade, and increasingly coerced into cybersex, the London-based rights group Korea Future Initiative said in a report in May. When she was smuggled out of North Korea in spring , Lee was told she would be waitressing in China.
When she arrived, her boss said her job was "chatting" at the computer. Until then, she had never seen a computer. She didn't know what a webcam was. She was The women agreed to interviews while in Vientiane, using nicknames they were given on the run to protect their privacy and avoid the North Korean government's possible retaliation against their relatives in the North.
Though The New York Times could not independently corroborate some details of their flight, recordings of online conversations between Chun and the women made before their escape supported their accounts. Kim toiled in a jade mine and later joined the unofficial market, selling fruits and South Korean clothes smuggled from China.
