1. Introduction
According to the former director of the U.S. State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, between 80 and 90 percent of North Korean migrants in China are actually trafficked persons, and a large proportion of those victims end up in sexual slavery (Bullock 2005). [272]
This frightening statistic is frequently presented as evidence of the brutality of the North Korean regime. It is also used to justify the earlier 2004 North Korean Human Rights Act, a U.S. law aimed at providing humanitarian assistance to North Koreans both inside and outside the country, that grants financial assistance to nonprofit organizations seeking to promote democracy, human rights, and the development of a market economy in North Korea. Lawmakers also sought to pressure the Chinese and North Korean governments to end their campaigns of locating and forcibly returning North Koreans entering China without permission. [272]
Although the law brought much-needed attention to the plight of trafficked North Korean women, the emphasis placed on the irresponsible and brutal policies of North Korea and China (U.S. State Department 2006) served to further obfuscate the broader conditions that shape trafficking of North Korean women and the women’s own migration experiences. [272]
As a result, antitrafficking discourses and policies ignore the complicated nature of the global political and economic structures that shape North Korean women’s migration and efforts for survival. Furthermore, popular depictions construct North Korean women as power less victims of sexual violence, in need of protection from the North Korean and Chinese authorities. Both are problematic because such discourses serve as justification for foreign policy interventions that ultimately harm rather than help North Korean women. Taking a feminist geopolitical approach, I seek to challenge totalizing discourses that categorize North Korean women as trafficked, powerless victims in need of rescue by enlightened nations. [272]
By unraveling the power relations that shape discourses and migrations, I argue that North Korean women’s own narratives about migration challenge the discourses and policies that cement their subaltern [종속된] status as powerless victims. [273]
2. Feminist Geopolitics, Migration, and Human Trafficking
Research on human trafficking since 2000 has taken different tacks. Writers who adopt a human rights perspective portray trafficked women as powerless victims of “transnational organized crime” in need of protec tion and assistance (Kristof 2004; Landesman 2004). Those supporting a criminal justice approach (United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime 2000; Council of Europe 2005) believe that trafficked women need to be controlled and regulated to protect national security. From this perspective, trafficked women are considered illegal and their bodies deemedvectorsfor the spread of HIV and other diseases (Sharma 2005).
Much of the focus has also been on sex trafficking only, a fact that feminist scholars argue has obscured other forms of trafficking and, crucially, the relationship among labor, migration, and international relations (Chuang 2006; Zheng 2010; Bernstein 2012; Brennan 2013). Furthermore, heightened emphasis on sex trafficking reinforces gendered and racialized constructions of the powerlessness of “victims.” [273]
Transnational feminists who study human traffick ing problematize the images of trafficked women as powerless and innocent as portrayed by international human rights organizations and by Western feminists (Sudbury 2005; Cheng 2010; Zheng 2010; Kempadoo 2012). These scholars are especially critical of the work of abolitionist feminists who view trafficking as a form of sexual exploitation caused by patriarchy and capi talist exploitation; that is, as harmful to women and a violation of women’s rights (Limoncelli 2009, 261–62). Transnational feminists argue that this approach gen erally avoids addressing the basic economic insecurity faced by trafficked women and its relationship to the patterns of uneven development generated within the globalizing capitalist system. To counter these hegemonic and geopoliticized discourses of human trafficking, transnational feminists try to include the views, experiences, and perspectives of women of the Global South in current debates and representations of human trafficking (Doezema 2010; Kempadoo 2012). [274]
3. Humanitarianism, Human Rights, and the Imperial Response to Trafficking
Theline between trafficking and smuggling is blurry, yet those anxious to protect exploited women often construct trafficked women as innocent and powerless victims in need of rescue (Sharma 2005). [274]
Agustın (2006) claims that this tendency is the result of moral panic about prostitution in Western society and the avoidance of uncomfortable truths about the willing ness of many women to be trafficked. Women catego rized as powerless slaves often receive public sympathy and support, but smuggled women willing to be trafficked garner no such sympathy and are, instead, seen as agents of sexual immorality (Kempadoo and Doezema 1998). [274]
An imperialist understanding of human trafficking can be found in the U.S. State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report (U.S. State Department 2003–2013). The U.S. government understands human trafficking as a multidimensional threat to global health, national security, and human security. To combat this threat with diplomatic tools, the U.S. government compiles information on more than 180 countries. Based on these data, the United States categorizes other nation-states into four groups (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 2 Watch List, or Tier 3) and announces that the third-tier countries—the least favorable rating among the categories—might be subject to certain sanctions by the U.S. government, including withholding of nonhumanitarian, non-trade-related assistance funds. [274-275]
North Korea has been included in this annual report since 2003, rated annually as one of the worst offenders (Tier 3). In June 2013, China was also downgraded from Tier 2 to Tier 3 and consequently could be subject to sanctions including the cancellation of cooperative programs and economic assistance. [275]
The Trafficking in Persons reports have been highly contentious, not only because of the position of authority assumed by the United States in categorizing states but also because of ongoing concerns about methodologies used to determine tier placement and compliance (Moon 2008; Gallagher 2010; Government Account ing Office 2010). By categorizing nation-states based on government efforts to combat trafficking, the United States is producing new spatial imaginaries of the world. Critics argue that this taxonomy mirrors binary understandings of power and spatiality—East and West, security and danger, freedom and oppression—reminiscent of the war on terror (Gregory and Pred 2006). Indeed, as scholars have observed (Kempadoo 2005; Gallagher 2010), in2009 Iran and a number of other Muslim countries were categorized as Tier 3, alongside Burma and Cuba. Meanwhile, Australia’s position in Tier 1 never changed,even though it took several years to meet minimum standards. These discrepancies confirm suspicion about the geopolitics surrounding categorization on the issue of trafficking; categorization is ideologically and politically motivated rather than rooted in facts. [275]
The credibility of the data published in the Trafficking in Persons reports was tested in the 2007 report, stating that the North Korean government did not acknowledge human trafficking along the North Korea–China border. Yet, as my interviews with North Korean women in China revealed, the North Korean government actively searches for human traffickers in the name of eliminating nonsocialist activities. My informants even claimed that the North Korean government had conducted open executions in various sites in the Northern Hamkyung province. Far from failing to make an effort to deter the trafficking of persons, secret video recordings of the public execution of three accused traffickers in Hoeryeong City in 2005 indicated that the North Korean government had indeed taken steps to combat trafficking, albeit in ways that remain highly problematic [275]
4. The Human Face of Human Trafficking
This type of deception and sale of women into marriages happened mostly in the 1990s. Few North Koreans had heard about human trafficking at that time and, as a result, women became targets. Both men and women work as recruiters for trafficking in North Korea. Interestingly, many trafficked women mentioned older women, young girls, or disabled people as recruiters.The images of the weak are utilized to deceive. Some interviewees told me that they followed traffickers to get food without realizing that they crossed the border. [276]
Some women voluntarily involve themselves in trafficking. Since about 2000, the North Korean government has publicly announced the dangers of human trafficking, but still some women choose to use trafficking as an escape route. Most North Korean women I met said that they simply found it preferable to marry Chinese men rather than see their families die or live in poverty. Considering the political and economic situation that pushed North Korean women from their home countries and the extraordinary circumstances that North Korean women face in China, however, fully consensual involvement in human trafficking is rare. [276]
Additionally, even North Korean women who consciously and willingly move abroad to improve their lives and that of their families cannot fully know the dangers of the clandestine routes they must take to cross the border and the vulnerable status awaiting them in China. Even when North Korean women voluntarily contact marriage brokers or human traffickers to cross the North Korea–China border, the money paid by marriage partners in China goes to the intermediaries or kidnappers. Neither the North Korean woman nor her family receives anything (Lankov 2004, 861). [276-277]
They negotiate and choose even with limited options. The following quote is testimony from North Korean poet Jini Choi (2005, 203). [277]
My friend told me that the quickest way to settle down in China is a marriage. He also told me to marry first and then run away if I cannot endure that marriage. [...] I agreed to come to China and then be sold into marriage. [...] I was sold into marriages three times and severely beaten and sexually abused almost every night while I lived with the third husband in China. As I have experienced those beatings, I know the realities of trafficking in North Korean women. Nonetheless, I personally hope that more and more North Korean women can cross the border to China and then come to safe third countries, even through ... human trafficking and providing sex. Don’t think that we are sexually immoral. If you have never starved more than three days in your life and seen your family die because of hunger in front of your eyes, you do not have a right to judge us.
Choi understands commercial marriage, and potential abuse in that marriage, as a strategy for survival and mobility. Her argument is supported by evidence that most women deported to North Korea subsequently re turned to China, even if trafficked as a means to cross the border (Kim2010). [277]