Ocean
The Living Force
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20081113/twl-smuggling-sex-and-slavery-3fd0ae9.html
Smuggling, Sex And Slavery
Hundreds of young girls fleeing North Korea are being forced into lives of slavery and prostitution in neighbouring China.
A Sky News investigation reveals they are crossing the border to escape the North Korean regime only to become embroiled in a hidden underworld.
Prostitution is illegal in China, but in the red light districts of the country's far north you would never guess it. Brothels line the streets, masqueraded as karaoke parlours.
With names like Don't Tell Mama and CEO VIP Club they advertise their presence in shameless neon.
Inside the brothels, young women - the foot soldiers of China's massive sex trade - wait for customers in locker rooms.
Adorned in clinging nylon dresses and gaudy make-up, they chat flirtatiously with passing males.
"Do you want me to do a dance for you?" asked one. "I'll take my clothes off. It's very pretty."
Posing as business people looking for women to entertain clients, and filming with a secret camera, Sky News went undercover in some of China's brothels, following a lead from underworld contacts.
In a darkened room a pimp confirmed that the story was true. "There are North Korean women in these brothels," he said. "They're smuggled across the border to work here".
Then, down a dingy corridor, we found what we were looking for. A madam introduced us to a young and very nervous North Korean girl.
Dressed in knee-high boots and a tiny mini-skirt, the girl waited for the madam to leave the room before telling her story in broken Chinese.
She said she had been selling her body in China for about two years, earning around £200 per month.
"When I first got here I was very frightened, I cried every day," she said. "Then I thought, I'm here now, and I can't leave. I have to earn money."
The next day, using the same cover story, we were taken to a grey Chinese tenement building where a pimp introduced us to a North Korean woman in her 40s.
Perched on the end of a bed, she told us that she picks up men off the street for £5 a time, bringing her customers back to the tiny cubicle that she rents from the pimp.
He stood by, seemingly unmoved, as she recounted a story of unimaginable loss.
The North Korean economy has long teetered on the brink of collapse. In the 1990s famine killed an estimated one million North Koreans. Now the United Nations is warning that the country is again facing a deadly food shortage.
Motivated by fear and hunger, thousands of North Koreans flee to China every year, wading across the river border in summer and walking across the ice in winter.
It's suicidally risky. North Korean border guards have orders to shoot to kill. And even if they make it to China, there's no safe haven.
The Chinese treat the refugees as illegal immigrants; if they're caught by the police they are shipped back across the border where they face imprisonment, and perhaps worse.
That makes North Korean refugees vulnerable - especially the women, who quickly become commodities in China's whirlwind market economy.
Our contacts took us to a village near the North Korean border where we met a woman who was trafficked into China. Human smugglers tricked her with the promise of work, and then bribed North Korean soldiers to let her cross the border.
Only when she arrived safely in China did they tell her that she'd been sold for £1,000 to a Chinese peasant farmer who couldn't find a wife in his own village.
In China, though, she's a modern day slave, who serves not only her 'husband' but also his elderly parents.
It's estimated that there are hundreds and probably thousands more like her across China, all of them traded for their bodies and their labour.
In desperation and grave danger they escaped a totalitarian state, but for North Korea's women - whether trafficked as brides, or employed in the Chinese flesh trade - there is no safe refuge in China, only exploitation and abuse.
Smuggling, Sex And Slavery
Hundreds of young girls fleeing North Korea are being forced into lives of slavery and prostitution in neighbouring China.
A Sky News investigation reveals they are crossing the border to escape the North Korean regime only to become embroiled in a hidden underworld.
Prostitution is illegal in China, but in the red light districts of the country's far north you would never guess it. Brothels line the streets, masqueraded as karaoke parlours.
With names like Don't Tell Mama and CEO VIP Club they advertise their presence in shameless neon.
Inside the brothels, young women - the foot soldiers of China's massive sex trade - wait for customers in locker rooms.
Adorned in clinging nylon dresses and gaudy make-up, they chat flirtatiously with passing males.
"Do you want me to do a dance for you?" asked one. "I'll take my clothes off. It's very pretty."
Posing as business people looking for women to entertain clients, and filming with a secret camera, Sky News went undercover in some of China's brothels, following a lead from underworld contacts.
In a darkened room a pimp confirmed that the story was true. "There are North Korean women in these brothels," he said. "They're smuggled across the border to work here".
Then, down a dingy corridor, we found what we were looking for. A madam introduced us to a young and very nervous North Korean girl.
Dressed in knee-high boots and a tiny mini-skirt, the girl waited for the madam to leave the room before telling her story in broken Chinese.
She said she had been selling her body in China for about two years, earning around £200 per month.
"When I first got here I was very frightened, I cried every day," she said. "Then I thought, I'm here now, and I can't leave. I have to earn money."
The next day, using the same cover story, we were taken to a grey Chinese tenement building where a pimp introduced us to a North Korean woman in her 40s.
Perched on the end of a bed, she told us that she picks up men off the street for £5 a time, bringing her customers back to the tiny cubicle that she rents from the pimp.
He stood by, seemingly unmoved, as she recounted a story of unimaginable loss.
The North Korean economy has long teetered on the brink of collapse. In the 1990s famine killed an estimated one million North Koreans. Now the United Nations is warning that the country is again facing a deadly food shortage.
Motivated by fear and hunger, thousands of North Koreans flee to China every year, wading across the river border in summer and walking across the ice in winter.
It's suicidally risky. North Korean border guards have orders to shoot to kill. And even if they make it to China, there's no safe haven.
The Chinese treat the refugees as illegal immigrants; if they're caught by the police they are shipped back across the border where they face imprisonment, and perhaps worse.
That makes North Korean refugees vulnerable - especially the women, who quickly become commodities in China's whirlwind market economy.
Our contacts took us to a village near the North Korean border where we met a woman who was trafficked into China. Human smugglers tricked her with the promise of work, and then bribed North Korean soldiers to let her cross the border.
Only when she arrived safely in China did they tell her that she'd been sold for £1,000 to a Chinese peasant farmer who couldn't find a wife in his own village.
In China, though, she's a modern day slave, who serves not only her 'husband' but also his elderly parents.
It's estimated that there are hundreds and probably thousands more like her across China, all of them traded for their bodies and their labour.
In desperation and grave danger they escaped a totalitarian state, but for North Korea's women - whether trafficked as brides, or employed in the Chinese flesh trade - there is no safe refuge in China, only exploitation and abuse.
