Lottery of misery: Bleak choices for North Korea's women

Yahoo – AFP, Liz Thomas, November 3, 2016

North Korean defector and activist Hyeonseo Lee has become a powerful voice
of dissent, laying bare the reality of life under the totalitarian regime in her memoir
The Girl with Seven Names (AFP Photo/Fred Dufour)

Stay and endure a life of privation and oppression or escape and risk being sold into sexual slavery: this is the stark choice facing many women in North Korea, bestselling author and activist Hyeonseo Lee warns.

The daughter of a military official, she is not your typical defector -- it was curiosity not desperation that pushed her to venture beyond its borders. Almost 20 years on she has become a powerful voice of dissent, laying bare the reality of life under the totalitarian regime in her memoir The Girl with Seven Names.

Now she is campaigning for greater protection for North Koreans who manage to flee -- particularly women -- warning that many are captured in China and sold into prostitution or end up in forced marriages.

"All but the lucky few will live the rest of their lives in utter misery," she tells AFP.

"They will be repeatedly raped day in and day out by an endless supply of customers who enrich their captors at their expense."

Horrified by 'survivor testimony' she is launching a new NGO, North Star NK, which has agents in the field across South East Asia and China helping those trafficked in the sex trade to escape.

Lee says: "They are so humiliated and broken, they don't want to speak out, so I decided I should try to help."

North Korean women wearing traditional 'hanbok' dresses walk on Kim Il-Sung

 square following a mass military parade in Pyongyang on October 10, 2015

(AFP Photo/Ed Jones)

Sex trafficking

The Tumen and Yalu rivers act as a border with China. In some parts the water is navigable, while in winter they are frozen over completely. For many the physical act of crossing is the easiest bit.

There is no asylum once they reach the other side, they are regarded as illegal migrants and face deportation if caught and then severe punishment in North Korea.

The women are in an incredibly vulnerable position Lee says. They have little choice but to trust the brokers smuggling them out. But there is no one to turn to if things go wrong.

"North Korean women and girls run a gauntlet of forced marriage, and sexual abuse, in China as a de facto requirement to escape to a third country," says Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Asia.

Lee herself narrowly avoided being forced into the sex trade when she crossed into China. She was told she was being trained to work in a hair salon but on arrival she discovered it was a brothel, and managed to run away.

North Korean women are also trafficked as 'forced brides', she says, usually sold to men in the countryside. The combination of China's one-child policy and a historic preference for boys has now led to a shortage of women of marriageable age. Families are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for brides for otherwise ineligible bachelors.

This too can end in abject misery.

"One trafficked woman I know was severely beaten by her husband and his family. To prevent her from escaping, they chained her inside a shed when they weren’t monitoring her," Lee recalls.

"Some of these trafficked North Korean women commit suicide, while others hold onto a sliver of hope that they will eventually escape. Almost none of them succeed."

North Korean women are trafficked to China as 'forced brides,' usually 

sold to men in the countryside (AFP Photo/Johannes Eisele)

Accidental defector

Her own story is one of remarkable survival against the odds.

From public executions and corpses lying on the streets to family gatherings and playing with friends, Lee's memories of her childhood are a patchwork of the ordinary and the horrifying -- and yet, she says, it was all normal in North Korea.

"The sad truth for most North Koreans is that they are brainwashed to think that their complete lack of freedom and human rights is normal," she says.

For her the coil of indoctrination unravelled gradually. She grew up on the border -- the neon lights of China visible just across the Yalu River.

"My country was completely dark, even though we were supposedly superior," she explains. "Living so close to China also allowed me to secretly watch Chinese TV channels, which opened my eyes to a whole new world."

A nationwide famine, known as the "Arduous March", also forced her to reconsider the rhetoric of the regime.

"In my hometown of Hyesan I could see dead bodies on the streets. The smell of decomposing flesh made me feel sick and gave me goosebumps," she recalls.

It is estimated hundreds of thousands died.

A dozen North Korean women working in a restaurant in China defected 

to the South in April (AFP Photo/Ed Jones)

Lee was just 17 when she crossed illegally crossed the river into China, planning on just a short visit. Instead she ended up on a decade-long odyssey, during which she assumed multiple identities, evaded state crackdowns on North Koreans, and endured betrayals and beatings.

She says: "I've had many low points throughout my life, but I remember crying so much when I was living by myself in China, because I never thought I would see my family again. I hated myself."

In 2008 she arrived in Seoul and was granted asylum, before going on to guide her family from North Korea to freedom too. She is happily married to American, who she met in the city.

Now she is determined to use her experiences to bring about change.

She says: "It's essential that the people who have been oppressed speak out. It's the most effective way to compel the international community to help."

* Hyeonseo Lee is speaking at Hong Kong International Literary Festival, which runs Nov 4-13

http://www.festival.org.hk/

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North Korean defector criticises China in rare Beijing talk

"Quantum Patterns" - Jan 23 - 24, 2016 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

"... The Darkness Can't See Beyond Itself

I want to give you proof yet again of something unusual and very telling of the way low vibration works. Within the first channel of the year [2016], I spoke about the young North Korean leader. I'm going to do it again. I'm going to do it again as a profound example of how low consciousness cannot see above itself. That means that it can only work with what it sees and knows. As powerful, as smart, as intellectual as it thinks it is, it can't get out of its own circle.

The former leader of North Korea was a classic egotist. When he died, his son took over and could do anything he wanted. This boy had watched his father for decades and knew he would take over someday. Naturally, he inherited the attributes his father taught him of self-importance, and he also became egotistically driven to the max. When he took power, he had the choice to make changes that would allow him to be even greater than his father. He wanted something that would elevate his name and his position to the highest egotistic place imaginable. His father was the model, and now he could do anything he wanted to be even more famous. What happened is classic. He completely missed the greatest opportunity that any man has had to become the most famous and beloved person on the earth. The idea never occurred to him. Even though he had been educated in the western world, he missed it.

If he had considered the high road and included the earth instead of a restricted population of his own country, he could have been the most famous and beloved leader on Earth, all of his life. At the moment he took over, all he had to do was to think beyond his circle. He was in the unique position to be a "wild card" and do something amazing - unify North an South Korea, drop the zone of death that was between those countries, bring families together after generations, stop nuclear programs that he really never needed other than to look important and, thereby, give his people abundance, food for all and peace in his region. All of Korea would worship him and the earth would give a sigh of relief in thanks for his wisdom and courage.

He would have received standing ovations upon entering the United Nations great room and they would bow before him and give him the highest peace prizes. He would have his ego stroked and stroked and stroked and stroked and be far greater than his father had ever been. But it never occurred to him. Instead, he perpetuated the dark box he inherited, and now he presides over the lowest energy possible, representing the most dangerous renegade energy on the planet. At the expense of keeping his people poor and impoverished and creating instability in his region, he gets to be a powerful and famous person for a moment in time from a small population. He will not last long. He can't see that what he is doing has no support within the majority of the planet's population, and he will lose everything. Isn't it interesting how strong the circle is that keeps a low vibration low. All of this is beginning to change, dear ones. If you examine individual people and the way they act, you're going to see this coming. You're going to recognize it.  ..."

THE OLD SOUL 2013 TOOLKIT" – Jan 13, 2013 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll)  (Text version)

"... The Change in the Way Things Work

Now I'm going to be very cautious with number five, and I'm going to change a paradigm of the way we channel. For 23 years, we have given you information in the soup of potentials that we read around you as the highest probable potential that exists. These things eventually become your reality because they are your free choice, and we know what you're thinking. We know what the potentials are because we know what the biases are, and we see all of humanity as a whole. Potentials are energy, and it gives us the ability to project your future based on how you are working these potentials. We have done this for a long time. Twenty-three years ago, we told you about many things that were potentially going to happen, and now they are your reality.

But now I'm going to depart from that scenario and I'm going to give you a potential on Earth that is not the strongest. I am going to tell you about a Human Being who has a choice. This potential is only about 50 percent. But I'm going to "read a potential" to you that you didn't expect. It's about a paradigm that is starting to shift.

Let's talk about North Korea. There's a young, new leader there. The potential is that he will never, ever hear this channel, so I can talk freely about him. He is facing a dilemma, for he is young and he knows about the differences in the energy in his land. He feels it. The lineage of his departed father lies upon him and all that is around him expects him to be a clone of this lineage. He is expected to continue the things that he has been taught and make North Korea great.

But he's starting to rethink them. Indeed, he wants to be a great leader, and to be heard and seen, and to make his mark on North Korea's history. His father showed him that this was very important. So he ponders a question: What makes a world leader great?

Let's ask that question to someone in an older earth paradigm from not that long ago. He will be an expert and a successful one. So this is a valid exercise, asking someone from the past who knows. We will ask that question to a man who you know and whose name is Napoleon. For us, this was yesterday and some of you were there. 

If you asked Napoleon, "What makes a world leader great?", he will say, "the size of the army, how much area can be efficiently conquered with a given amount of resources and men, how important the leader appears will then be based upon how many citizens call him emperor or king, the taxes he can impose, and how many fear him." Not only was that Napoleon's reality, but he was right for the energy he was part of at the time. So Napoleon went back and forth between world leader, general and prisoner. He accomplished almost everything he set out to do. His expertise was obvious, and you remember his name to this day. He was famous.

What makes a world leader great? What I am showing you is the difference in thinking between then and now. There are some choices that this evolving young Human Being has that could change everything on the planet if he wanted. His father would tell this boy that what makes a world leader great is the potential of his missile power, or how close he can get to having a nuclear weapon, or how he stands up against the power of the West, or how he continues to aggravate and stir drama as a small country - getting noticed and being feared. His father would tell him that this is his lineage and that is what he's been told all his life. His father did it well and surrounded himself with advisors who he then passed on to his son.

Now, there's a 50 percent chance of something happening here, but this is not a strong potential, dear ones. I'm bringing this forward so you can watch it work one way or the other. For if the son continues in his father's footsteps, he is doomed to failure. The energy on the earth will see it as old and he will be seen as a fool. If, however, he figures it out, he could be the most famous man on the planet... which is really what his father wanted.

If Kryon were to advise this man, here's what I would tell him. He could be the greatest known leader the current world has ever known, for what he does now will be something the world will see as a demarcation point from the old ways. Not only that, but what he does now will be in the history books forever, and because of his youth, he has the potential to outlive every other leader on the planet! So he's going to have longer fame than anyone ever has.

I would tell him this: Tell the border guards to go home. Greet the south and begin to unify North and South Korea in a way that no past prophet ever said could happen. Allow the two countries to be separate, but have them as two parts of a larger Korean family with free trade and travel. Start alliances with the West and show them that you mean it. Drop the missile programs because you will never need them!

This will bring abundance to the North Korean people that they never expected! They will have great economic sustenance, schools, hospitals and more respect than ever for their amazing leader. The result would be fame and glory for the son, which the father had never achieved, something that the world would talk about for hundreds of years. It would cause a United Nations to stand and applaud as the son walked into the Grand Assembly. I would ask him, "Wouldn't you like that?"

Doesn't this seem obvious to most of you? He could achieve instant fame and be seen as the one who made the difference and started something amazing. But watch him. He has a choice, but it's not simple. He still has his father's advisors, but one of which he's already dismissed. He may get it, or he may not. There is a 50 percent chance. But I'll tell you that if he doesn't do it, the one after him will. Because it is so obvious. 

We show you this to tell you that this is the evolvement of the Human species. It is the slow realization that putting things together is the answer to all things, instead of separating them or conquering them. Those who start promoting compromise and begin to create these energies that never were here before will be the ones you're going to remember. Dear ones, it's going to happen in leadership and politics and in business. It's a new paradigm...."