Chae-ran sets the plate of sliced oranges and dragon fruit on the floor, a few feet from the pile of bedding where she sleeps.
At 35 years old she is starting over again, alone in a foreign country, without so much as a photograph or letter from her old life – just a sparse room with bare white walls. It’s her home, and the first place she’s had to herself after a life spent in darkness.
Chae-ran is among a number of women who fled North Korea – only to be trafficked and sexually exploited in China, where a gender imbalance has created a black market for brides.
Nearly two decades later, she was able to stage a second escape through Laos and Thailand. But experts say that opportunities for others to follow the same path have narrowed since the pandemic, leaving untold numbers of North Korean girls and women trapped in servitude.
CNN is identifying Chae-ran by a pseudonym for the safety of her family back in North Korea, and the son she left behind in China.
Escape and exploitation
After graduating high school, Chae-ran made her first escape. She’d been assigned a job at a coal mine, like her father and most people in their village near the Chinese border – but the teenager didn’t want to spend her life doing hard labor, deep underground.
She observed other villagers crossing the river that separates North Korea from China to find work and desired to aid in the support of her family. So, one day, without telling her mother, she and a friend left home with the help of a broker – people who plan and facilitate the journey out of North Korea for a fee. She recalls crossing the river at early evening in autumn when the sky was still light.
But upon reaching the other side, she and her friend were put into cars and driven into northwestern China, where they were given a choice, she said: entertain customers at a bar, or marry a Chinese man.
“I wanted to cry but I knew nothing could change even if I did,” she said, speaking in Korean during a conversation with CNN. “I thought I couldn’t work at a bar so that left me only one option, marrying a Chinese man.”
Shortly afterward, Chae-ran says she was separated from her friend, who she never saw again, and introduced to the man who had bought her, a Chinese farmer eight years her senior.
“I didn’t like the man because he was short, but I didn’t want to be sold again so I stayed quiet,” she said.
She was brought to the man’s village, in the mountains of northeastern Hebei province, close to the capital Beijing. “Honestly, they seemed poorer than my family,” she said. “The houses in the village were made from mud and stones, and the windows didn’t have glass but thin paper.”
Since she couldn’t speak Chinese, she couldn’t communicate with the farmer or his family, and she felt she couldn’t escape. That was 17 years ago.
Many, like Chae-ran, leave their isolated home nation hoping to find freedom and opportunity once across the Chinese border, only to be trafficked by the brokers they hired. One 2019 investigation by the London-based Korea Future Initiative (KFI) claimed that tens of thousands of North Korean girls and women were being exploited this way, including some as young as 12.
China’s former one-child policy and families’ traditional preference for sons have led to a significant increase in the number of men to women. Human traffickers are reportedly attempting to fill that gap by selling North Korean girls and women – some into marriage, while others are enslaved in brothels or made to perform graphic acts on webcams, according to researchers and organizations that help refugees.
According to the KFI report, victims who are forced to marry are often raped, forced to have children, and forced to work in domestic or manual labor.
CNN was not able to independently verify claims made in the report. Other reports by the US State Department and rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have reached similar conclusions.
Chae-ran said her so-called ‘husband’ didn’t treat her badly, but she was required to obey him, and he presented her as his wife. Within eight weeks of being sold, Chae-ran became pregnant. She said she didn’t want to have a child with him and attempted to induce a miscarriage, but failed, and gave birth to a son.
“The baby was so beautiful,” she said. “When I saw my pretty baby, I changed my mind.”
She resigned herself to living in China for the rest of her life.
Living in the shadows
There are few ways to avoid trafficking victims like Chae-ran.
China considers North Korean refugees to be economic migrants, and forcibly deports them back to North Korea – where, as alleged defectors, they face imprisonment, possible torture or worse, activists say.
Without legal status or protections, refugees are forced to live in the shadows, often unable to speak the language and unable to reach their loved ones back home.
Chae-ran and her husband’s family moved to a nearby town a few years later, where she found work washing dishes. Later, when she began learning Chinese, she worked at a supermarket, a tea shop, and as a food delivery courier.
During that period, she also met other North Korean refugees in the same situation – with their status public knowledge in the village, she said. CNN is not disclosing the location to protect Chae-ran’s identity.
According to the KFI report, the buying of a North Korean wife is “always known to the local community” but rarely reported to authorities. Some locals argue their village would not survive otherwise, given the skewed gender ratio and China’s falling birthrate.
Some refugees in the town, like Chae-ran, had no identification documents and lived under the radar for fear of arrest and deportation back to North Korea – meaning they are often denied job opportunities, access to health care, and the ability to move freely. But, she said, a few others did have documents that gave them better access to resources.
According to researchers and experts, authorities in some parts of China have begun issuing so-called “residence permits” to North Korean women married to Chinese men, for a “considerable financial price.”
These aren’t official state-issued ID cards, but rather a document used by China’s public security forces for surveillance purposes, according to Kim Jeong Ah, a former North Korean refugee who was trafficked in China, and now heads the organization Rights for Female North Koreans (RFNK).
Speaking at the United Nations in September, Kim described how these residence permits allow North Korean refugees to get jobs and use public transport within the region – but not to travel beyond their local area, or to access medical care. She added that many women are coerced or threatened by local authorities to register for the permit, and face strict government surveillance afterward.
Chae-ran claimed that her husband and in-laws refused to pay for the documents, leaving her feeling exposed and fearful of detection by Chinese authorities. She had to be careful not to get into accidents when riding her bicycle; she avoided upsetting local residents who threatened to report her to the police; she felt afraid just seeing a police car.
“I lived in China, but I didn’t exist as a person,” she said.
Surveillance under Covid
Life in China only got worse during the pandemic, with the country imposing an unrelenting zero-tolerance policy. Most public places required residents to have mandatory tests and health QR codes, but Chae-ran was unable to access them without identity documents.
When her son’s school asked all parents to submit proof of negative Covid test results, she had to explain to the teacher that she was a North Korean refugee. The use of facial recognition in parts of China to track individuals’ health status made it impossible to hide from authorities. She confined herself at home, well into the third year of the pandemic.
The pandemic restrictions also made some North Korean trafficking victims more vulnerable to abusive relationships or domestic violence, said Sokeel Park, the South Korea country director for international nonprofit Liberty in North Korea (LINK), which helps North Koreans resettle in the South.
Chae-ran’s son had been her sole reason for staying in China all these years, but she realized she could not continue living in hiding and isolation. When she floated the idea of fleeing to South Korea to her son, then 16, he said he didn’t want to leave.
The other North Korean refugees she’d met in town had connections to brokers who could help them escape, while church organizations and non-profit groups discreetly helped raise funds for the journey. One day last April, she told her family she was going to work; instead, she and a group of refugees fled, traveling across the country to China’s southern border. She didn’t tell her son she was leaving.
From the southern border, they crossed through several neighboring countries and trekked along the Mekong River to Thailand, where they turned themselves in to local police and were put in a Thai detention center.
“It was so hot in the detention center that I even had heat rashes. People in the cell were fighting over everything,” she said. “The hardest thing for us was not knowing when we’ll be able to leave for South Korea.”
Chae-ran’s eventual journey to South Korea was organized by a South Korean embassy official, who visited her and other North Korean refugees in detention and brought them food. He was the only warm person she met on her long journey to escape, she said, recounting the experience through tears.
A new life in South Korea
Late May saw the arrival of Chae-ran in South Korea. Like all North Koreans who enter the South, she underwent security checks and spent time in a facility that teaches defectors to assimilate into society before finally starting her new life in November, six months later.
With financial support from the government, she rented a studio apartment and bought appliances such as a washing machine and a television. Churches and non-profit organizations helped her obtain basic goods such as winter blankets, utensils, and dishes.
Chae-ran was especially excited to receive her South Korean identification documents. “When I got my ID card for the first time, I felt so happy,” she said. “I came to (South) Korea for this one thing, and I finally have it.”
Refugees can find it challenging to adjust to life in South Korea, even with support.
Some have described struggling with culture shock, loneliness, unemployment or poor working conditions – and hostility from South Koreans, especially in recent years as North Korea has ratcheted up tensions with its neighbor.
During that period, there has been a decrease in the number of defectors who have crossed the border to start a new life. Just 196 North Koreans entered South Korea last year, according to the Unification Ministry – more than the previous two years during the pandemic, but a steep drop from pre-pandemic levels. According to the ministry, most of those defectors left North Korea a long time ago and spent years in third countries before arriving in Seoul.
“It has become much more difficult to escape from inside North Korea,” said Park, from LINK.
Those stuck in China now have fewer avenues of escape because the network of brokers helping to transport North Koreans out of the country collapsed during the pandemic, Park said.
Brokers who remain have raised their prices due to increased risks and surveillance, while newcomers to the business are inexperienced, making it a risky gamble for North Korean refugees. That’s not to mention the tightened border security in China and neighboring countries.
For now, Chae-ran is planning for her future. Her dream is to visit China as a tourist with her newly acquired passport to see her son, who she was able to connect with through her sister-in-law in China. She’s received a barista certificate, is working on her driver’s license, and has applied to take a nail care class at the government training facility.
While it can be overwhelming to start from square one – especially in a country with social stigma against North Korean defectors – she’s determined to make it work.
“I’ll face anything, everything,” she said. “I’m aware of discrimination against people like me in this society, but no matter how bad that is, it will be much better than living in China.”
