April 12, 2011
SEOUL (AFP) - Two female refugees from North Korea have been arrested in South Korea for allegedly forcing fellow fugitives into prostitution while they were in China, police said Tuesday.
The case is a rare attempt to punish refugees for crimes in China, where many women who have fled the North are sexually exploited.
Police said that over a two-year period the pair acquired 70-80 North Korean women fresh from their impoverished homeland, about half of them from Chinese brokers.
They paid the brokers about 3.6 million South Korean won ($3,298) for each woman.
The pair allegedly forced the women into prostitution in night-time establishments they operated in the northeastern Chinese city of Qingdao between 2007 and 2009.
The two, now aged 30 and 40, left China for South Korea in 2009.
Seoul police launched an investigation following complaints from some of the victims who had managed to escape to the South, said Park Chu-Ung, a police officer in charge of the investigation.
"Some women were beaten harshly for being unable to attract enough customers or trying to run away," Park told AFP, adding the suspects lured the victims with false promises of sending them to the capitalist South.
"The suspects took advantage of their vulnerable position as women with little money and no local connections," he said.
"This is a very rare case of trying to punish North Korean defectors for what they did in China."
Two ethnic Korean Chinese living in the South were also arrested for working with the pair in China. Police also suspect that another North Korean refugee in China and a South Korean who lives overseas acted as accomplices.
Almost all North Korean refugees cross first to China, which repatriates those whom it catches as economic migrants. Some try to travel on to third countries, while thousands of others hide out in China.
Activists say women account for 80 percent of those living undercover in China.
South Korea's state human rights watchdog said last year that many female refugees suffer sexual violence or human trafficking in China and other countries after fleeing.
At a Washington news conference in April 2009, North Korean women who escaped the sex trade in China said brokers treated them like livestock by selling them to one or more "husbands".
