She fled North Korea but was sold to a man in China. Her second escape came nearly 20 years later.

Chae-ran made her first escape after finishing high school. 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’d seen other villagers crossing the river that separates North Korea from China to find work and wanted to help support 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 remembers it was early evening in autumn; the sky was still light when she crossed the river. 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.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/08/asia/north-korean-refugees-trafficked-china-intl-hnk-dst/index.html

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