Sexual abuse of North Korean women is common: HRW

Representational image of sexual abuse Representational image

A report by the Human Rights Watch North says that Korean officials commit sexual abuse against women with near-total impunity. The HRW says the abuse is so common that it has become part of daily life. The report, released on Wednesday, claims that officials commit these crimes with "little or no concern for the consequences".

The 86-page report, 'You Cry at Night, but Don't Know Why': Sexual Violence against Women in North Korea details the harrowing accounts of 62 women who were abused by high-ranking party officials, prison and detention facility guards and interrogators, police and secret police officials, prosecutors, and soldiers.

According to the report, North Korean women rarely complain of the abuse as there are very few, if any, avenues for redress. When an official in position "picks" a woman, she has no other choice other than to comply with the demands he makes. Complains could lead to further sexual violence, longer detentions for those in custody, beatings, forced labour and increased scrutiny while conducting market activities. Those not in custody stand the risk of losing their source of income and jeopardising their family's survival, increased scrutiny while conducting market activities.

"Sexual violence in North Korea is an open, unaddressed, and widely tolerated secret," HRW executive director Kenneth Roth said. "North Korean women would probably say 'Me Too' if they thought there was any way to obtain justice, but their voices are silenced in Kim Jong Un's dictatorship," he added.

Many women became traders and main breadwinners for their families in the late 1990s as they were not required to attend a government-established workplace. But in a country were gender discrimination and subordination of women are pervasive, women who stepped out were easily exposed to sexual violence at the hands of officials.

One anonymous former textile trader in her 40s recounted being treated like a sex toy "at the mercy of men". "On the days they felt like it, market guards or police officials could ask me to follow them to an empty room outside the market, or some other place they'd pick," where they forced sexual encounters, she said. "It happens so often nobody thinks it is a big deal. We don't even realise when we are upset," she added. "But we are human, and we feel it," she said. "So sometimes, out of nowhere, you cry at night and don't know why."

Contributing factors include deeply embedded patterns of gender inequality and a lack of sex education or awareness about sexual violence. The HRW report quoted another victim—who also used a pseudonym—who said she had been raped by a police officer after being denied food for three days in a dark room at a border detention centre. Now that she lives in the South, she said, "I know it's sexual violence and rape".

Pyongyang meanwhile is fiercely protective and claims that international criticism on the issue as a smear campaign to undermine its "sacred socialist system". Pyongyang maintains that it protects and promotes "genuine human rights", and says there is no justification for the West to try to set human rights standards for the rest of the world. According to data submitted by Pyongyang to a UN panel on gender equality, a total of five people were convicted of rape in the North in 2015.