Tens of thousands of North Korean women have been trafficked across the border and sold as brides since a crippling famine in North Korea killed hundreds of thousands of people in the mid-1990s. All these brides face hard choices in China, Japan Times reported.
North Korean brides believe to brokers who tell the women they can find jobs in China, but instead sell them to Chinese men, mostly poor farmers in three border provinces who struggle to find brides in part because Beijing’s one-child policy led to the abortion of many female fetuses.
“When I first came here, I spent all day drinking because I worried a lot about my kids in North Korea. I was quite out of my mind,”
said the woman, who asked to be identified only as S.Y. due to safety concerns.
Because the women have been trafficked to China, they are living in the country illegally and have never officially married their husbands.
Some of the North Koreans get along with their new families and are satisfied with their new life in China. Others are abused by their husbands or ignored or mocked by their new relatives and neighbours. Others have risked the perilous journey to South Korea — with some having to make the heart-wrenching choice to leave children behind again, this time in China.
Nowadays, it is really hard to imagine that such a business still is successful but the reality shows that brides from North Korea are ready to find their new life anywhere but North Korea.
