1. Introduction
North Korean mobility tends to be narrowly framed in relation to either brutal state vio lations or severe economic crisis, the so-called “Arduous March” (1995–1998) (Aldrich 2011).1 Within this frame, North Korean migrants are understood as mere victims of the North Korean regime as well as of unprecedented economic crisis, and subsequently the agency of North Korean migrants is to a great extent underestimated (Kim 2012). [116]
It seems that, increasingly, North Korean migrants actively pursue a better life and this allows them to be selective in their choice of destinations and places of settlement. More importantly, the majority may not even have intended to “migrate” to “foreign countries” in the beginning, but rather were merely “coming and going across the river like going to a neighbouring village and did not express serious concern about crossing the border” (Korean Human Rights Commission 2009, 69). [116]
It is hard to estimate the exact number of North Korean border-crossers, but it is fair to say that millions of North Koreans have been crossing the border since the mid 1990s. Most North Koreans move back and forth between China and North Korea rather than fleeing to South Korea or any other country, and approximately 50,000~100,000 North Koreans have settled on the Chinese side of the borderland despite their illegal status. Some North Koreans have arrived in South Korea, with the number totalling 28,795 from 1953 until 2015. A high proportion of females make up this flow to the South, approximately 70 percent of the total, with those originating from North Hamgyong Province– the northernmost province of North Korea– estimated at roughly 63 percent (Ministry of Unification 2016). North Koreans settling on the Chinese side of the borderland are also mostly women, the majority of whom also have originated from North Hamgyong Province. It is thus reasonable to argue that mobility, even of North Korean women going to South Korea, is closely related to the Sino-North Korea borderland and its cultural and historical resources. [117]
2. The Sino-North Korea borderland
The aforementioned characteristics of borderlands can be found in the North Hamgyong Province of North Korea and the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture [연변 조선족 자치구], where official space and everyday place intersect in a dynamic manner. In the nineteenth century, even after the modern border was established, ethnic Koreans in China and North Koreans maintained the borderland characteristic of being connected by blood ties, language, ethnicity, and culture. The approximately two million ethnic Koreans in China have resided collectively in the borderland and retain the Korean language and culture with the support of China’s policy for minority ethnicities. [118-119]
3. Mobile North Koreans and their spatial perception in the borderland
Given the particular characteristics of the Sino-North Korea borderland, there have long been frequent and temporary migrations among ethnic Koreans and North Koreans. Before the economic crisis in North Korea, migration flows appear to have been unidi rectional from China to North Korea and undertaken by ethnic Koreans (Smith in NKIDP e-dossiers 2012, 1). From the late 1950s to the end of the 1970s, ethnic Kore ans legally and illegally migrated to North Korea from China in order to escape eco nomic difficulties and racial discrimination, with the North Korean government offering housing, food, money and work to returnees as it needed labor power for cooperative farms and factories. [119]
The majority of the Koreans who migrated north of the Tumen River are from North Hamgyong Province. After their migration, these Koreans continued to carry out every day exchanges and maintain blood relations with the North Hamgyong Province resi dents (H. Lee et al. 2006, 14). Until the early 1980s, many ethnic Koreans in China crossed the border into North Korea to sell goods and buy North Korea’s minerals and food products. Such exchanges served as the foundation for ethnic Koreans in China and North Koreans to maintain blood relations. Subsequently, as the North Korean eco nomic crisis became severe, the situation reversed and the North Koreans began to seek the help of the ethnic Koreans in China (Kim 2012). Thus the ethnic Koreans in China and the North Hamgyong Province residents, on the basis of blood ties from the past, created a unique everyday space. This space is a type of “cultural and linguistic zone” on the basis of a shared culture and language (Kim 2012). Those North Korean border crossers who migrated during the economic crisis should not be generalized as people “who turned their backs on their countries and crossed the border.” Rather, they should be investigated in terms of the everyday space of the border-crossers and the ethnic Koreans in China that was built over a long period. [120]
Given this dynamism in the borderland, North Koreans there have managed to become involved in both legal and illegal mobility. Legal visitors can normally get a three month permit from the North Korean government if they can prove they have rela tives in China. Obtaining permission to visit China requires at least two hundred dollars as bribery, so North Korean border-crossers attempt to stay longer than three months in order to earn sufficient money or benefits from relatives.4 Thus, legal visitors seem to become illegal migrants easily, but the North Korean government does not seem to restrict them from staying in China, since they actively bring in capital to North Korea. Most legal migrants rely on their blood ties, ethnic Koreans, for finding jobs and other economic benefits. Because of the influx of South Korean migrants and capital, coopera tion between South Koreans and ethnic Chinese has skyrocketed in the borderland, which implies North Korean migrants linking to South Koreans via ethnic Chinese. [121]
During the Arduous March, most border-crossers had little intention to stay in China or migrate to South Korea; in North Hamgyong Province, North Korean residents have perceived the borderland as their everyday place. [121]
He said that those who are not familiar with the culture of the borderland would not be able to even think about crossing the river: [121]
Everything is ultimately the riverside. People from other provinces do not even think about coming. Maybe people who go to North Hamgyong Province for business may think about it. People on the riverside are very knowledgeable. They always cross over. They know it all. They have ears and eyes, so how can they not know? [122]
The North Korean regime has restricted people’s mobility domestically; North Korean residents require travel permission from the government and most live in government-designated areas (J. Seo 2005). One of the characteristics of North Korean society is the control over people’s mobility, and information and knowledge is heavily censored by the government. Because of this, even during the worst famine, most North Koreans did not even think about crossing the border, and only residents in the border land moved to China. As interviews indicate, only a very few people from Hwanghae and Kangwon Provinces, far from the border, could even come up with the idea of crossing the border. [122]
4. The feminization of North Korean mobility
However, once diplomatic rela tions were established in 1992 between South Korea and China, economic exchanges between the two countries increased exponentially. After many ethnic Koreans in China left for South Korea for economic migration, the gap provided sufficient space for North Korean border-crossers to migrate to China. The trend of ethnic Koreans in China migrating to South Korea, which became full-fledged in the mid- to late-1990s, illus trates a distinct feature of global economic migration, that is, the feminization of migration. Because of the expansion of the service industry in South Korea, the increase in demand for household help, nannies, and caregivers due to more South Korean women entering the workforce, and South Korean women’s growing tendency to avoid mar riage, increasing numbers of female ethnic Koreans from China migrated to South Korea (Lee et al. 2006, 259; Sassen 1991). [123]
North Korean women filled the gap left by the women who migrated to South Korea. If the ethnic Korean women from China filled the gap for “female” jobs avoided by women in South Korea, it was the North Korean women with illegal statuses working for a lower wage and enduring all sorts of injustices who filled the gap in China. This illustrates the “reproduction of the international division of labour,” where a structure of inequality functions within the global economic system (Lee et al. 2006; Sassen 1991). [123]
5. Life experiences of North Korean women in the borderland
North Korean women in China can be divided into those marrying ethnic Koreans in China or Han Chinese in the agricultural regions and serving the patriarchal system, and those working in restaurants, massage shops, or bars in the city or engaging in the sex industry. Although these two groups settle in different social spaces, both groups exist within a capitalist market intimately connected with patriarchy. [124]
Here, the North Korean women take on the tasks of childbirth, household labor, farming, and taking care of parents. Many women refuse to play these roles today; but these women adaptively accept the unequal relationships inherent in this patriarchal system because of their illegal status. In the case of women who have crossed the border numerous times or have experienced forced repatriation, they seek a stable space for residence. Since the farming village is some distance from the city, this place of dwelling becomes a relatively safe space. [124]
We don’t have other ways to survive in China. Our kind of people live in very similar ways. Working in restaurants. … Of course I got a man. I was not trafficked. I know that our kind of people are often trafficked for marriage. I knew one ethnic Korean woman. I told her that you could sell me, but I would like to meet a man first. I kept telling her that I would live here so you should bring someone I could really live with. She was good to me. She brought the man, ethnic Korean. He was very diligent. [124]
She understands very well that illegal North Korean women need a safety net, which normally refers to legal Chinese (ethnic Korean or Han) men. She engineered her rela tionship to ensure successful settlement in China with a young child. She thus actively used marriage to a Chinese man in order to secure her safety and settle down in China. This sense of volition has been commonly overlooked, with such experiences described as human trafficking. But some North Korean women often understand this “human trafficking” in a different context. Within particular sets of constraints, some of them actively facilitate relationships or marriage with Chinese men as a means of settlement in China. [125]
The problem is that, for North Korean women with an illegal status, in a more con straining environment than that in which ethnic Korean women find themselves in China, the range of choice for occupations is inevitably much more restrictive. Women are flowing into the sex industry through various channels; cases have been heard of North Korean women believing they would be working in a restaurant and getting turned over to the sex industry upon crossing the border, while other women who are unable to endure farm work escape to the large cities and have to enter into prostitution (Korean Human Rights Commission 2009). For women who have stayed in China for a longer time, it is understood that they have either married a Chinese (ethnic Korean in China or Han Chinese) or have worked in a service job. As one informant told me of one of her acquaintances [127]
North Korean women are the most marginalized minority and are exposed to dual suppression, between being illegal migrants and being the weak gender within power relationships. [127]