North Korean Women and Defection: Human Rights Violations and Activism 9781529215465

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Series page
North Korean Women and Defection: Human Rights Violations and Activism
Copyright information
Table of Contents
Series Editors’ Preface
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction
The DPRK since 1994
Refugees and asylum seekers in the global context
Hostile treatment of forced migrants
Everyday bordering
Gendered and racialized bordering
Justice for North Korean female forced migrants
DPRK human rights debates
North Korean women’s human rights activism
Meanings of activism and human rights activists
North Korean defector activism and reactions from the Kim Jong Un regime
Structure of the book
Notes
References
2 Researching North Korean Women’s Human Rights: Methodological Considerations
Introduction
Phenomenological understanding
Intersubjectivity in phenomenology
Phenomenology and the life history
The power of storytelling
Feminist approach
Accessing and recruiting participants
Data analysis
Ethical challenges
Challenges faced by a South Korean academic researching North Korean defectors’ stories
Insider and outsider
Question of authenticity and truth
Conclusion
Note
References
3 Cycle of Oppression: Violations of Human Rights against North Korean Women
Introduction
Human rights abuses inside North Korea
Human rights abuses outside North Korea
Human rights abuses during and after repatriation
Conclusion
Notes
References
4 North Korean Women’s Human Rights Activism
Introduction
Changing subjectivities: from invisible ‘victims’1 to activists
Critical awareness as a starting point
Sharing stories as an act of resistance
A sense of responsibility towards others
Connections with the lead activist
A sense of guilt stemming from collective conscience
Challenges of activism
Deep pain and desire to forget the past
Fear
Finance
Language barriers
Tactics and strategies
Learning English
Studying and educating oneself continuously
Building networks
Looking to the future
Significance of North Korean women’s rights and the voices of defector activists
Conclusion
Notes
References
5 Altruistic Political Imagination
Imagination
Imagination, will and wilfulness
Imagination, intersubjectivity and moral ethics
Altruistic Political Imagination
Conclusion
References
6 Conclusion
North Korean women’s human rights
Defector human rights activism
Impact of human rights activism
Limitations
Recommendations
References
Index

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NORTH KOREAN WOMEN AND DEFECTION Human Rights Violations and Activism Hyun-​Joo Lim

First published in Great Britain in 2024 by Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1-​9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +​44 (0)117 374 6645 e: bup-​[email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2024 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-5292-1544-1 hardcover ISBN 978-1-5292-1545-8 ePub ISBN 978-1-5292-1546-5 ePdf The right of Hyun-​Joo Lim to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the author and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: blu inc Front cover image: istock/​noLimit46 Bristol University Press uses environmentally responsible print partners. Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents Series Editors’ Preface Acknowledgements

vi xi

1 Introduction 2 Researching North Korean Women’s Human Rights: Methodological Considerations 3 Cycle of Oppression: Violations of Human Rights against North Korean Women 4 North Korean Women’s Human Rights Activism 5 Altruistic Political Imagination 6 Conclusion

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105 150 170

Index

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Series Editors’ Preface Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott If North Korea figures in the imagination of inhabitants of the Western world at all, it is only dimly perceived and little understood. The little that most of us know is that it is a secretive country with an impoverished population, that it is governed by an ostensibly communist regime led by the autocratic Kim dynasty and is bent on developing nuclear weapons. Occasionally, we hear stories of those who have escaped its closely guarded borders. In this book, Hyun-Joo Lim provides us with a deeper understanding of living in and escaping from North Korea – the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). In particular, she demonstrates that North Koreans’ experiences of deprivation, human rights violations and defection are highly gendered. She lays bare the oppression and abuse suffered by North Korean women both within the DPRK and during their escape through China. The book is based on narratives of women defectors/refugees from the DPRK resident in the UK and who left the DPRK between 2016 and 2022. Lim initially interviewed North Korean human rights activists, both male and female, through which the gendered character of human rights abuses came to the fore. She then focused her attention on North Korean women in the UK, including a minority who were engaged in activism. Lim faced numerous challenges in gaining access to this group of women and researching their lives. In a context where the DPRK’s embassy monitors the activities of defectors, most keep a low profile lest they risk harm to their families back home. Winning their trust and establishing their willingness to participate in sensitive research was by no means easy. The vulnerability of participants and their families still in the DPRK raised particular ethical concerns in safeguarding anonymity and confidentiality as well as ensuring support for those who needed it. Lim also discusses the impact on herself of hearing distressing details of women’s experiences and her sense of helplessness in the face of the suffering they described. Additionally, Lim’s South Korean background presented barriers; she may have shared a common language and ethnic heritage with her participants, but her cultural and social experience differed greatly from theirs. She admits vi

Series Editors’ Preface

that, before beginning her research, she knew little about North Korean life and people and became acutely aware of the chasm that divided North and South – even in the UK, the two Korean communities remain largely separate from each other. The narratives Lim elicited from North Korean women do not make for easy reading. On the one hand there are accounts of everyday gender inequalities and of the gendered consequences of poverty and repression, on the other hand there are stories of extreme brutality and exploitation. Despite the communist party’s official policy on gender equality, North Korea has remained highly patriarchal. Domestic violence is so common that it is taken for granted and treated as a private family matter – one woman expressed relief at the death of her husband as bringing his abuse to an end. Sexual harassment is widespread and exacerbated by the hierarchical party system whereby women are expected to trade sexual favours for access to better job allocations or party membership. In the army (to which women are conscripted), women are blamed when such practices result in pregnancy; they are dishonourably discharged and their ‘misconduct’ remains on the official record, blighting their lives, Though women were mobilised into employment in the early decades of communist rule, by the 1990s, as the economy slowed, they were often forced out of paid work on marriage. This was a time of famine, brought about by natural disasters, mismanagement, the inflexibility of the centralised economy and loss of support from the Soviet Union after its collapse. Women who no longer had official employment received less than half the daily grain ration of employed women – effectively starvation level. When factories could not pay workers, women turned to informal trading to support their families, becoming the main breadwinners. This may have elevated their status but had no effect on the domestic division of labour or men’s status and increased women’s burdens and, Lim suggests, may have increased domestic violence. Moreover, women traders operated at the margins of legality, which left them open to sexual exploitation by officials and others. Meanwhile, the regime continued ideological reinforcement of women’s role as child bearers and denied them reproductive rights: there is no legal access to abortion and family planning was suspended after the economic crisis. Although medical care is supposed to be free and universal in the DPRK, in practice much goes on unofficially outside the hospital system with doctors moonlighting, as even they are not adequately paid. The women drew attention to the lack of menstrual protection available to them. One talked of what was provided to her during military service – four washable pads, which were difficult to wash and dry while undertaking military training all day. It was even worse for civilian women, who used what rags they could find, and worse still for those in prison camps – one woman talked of ripping up her underwear to make pads. vii

North Korean Women and Defection

If women manage to leave North Korea, usually to go to or via China, they face new challenges and dangers. Not all of the women Lim interviewed had initially planned to leave for good, but were seeking ways to help support their families, whether through trade or employment. Many women managed to cross the border during the famine years as they were not officially employed and were, therefore, less visible to the authorities. China offered them opportunities, but they also risked falling prey to traffickers. One woman reported crossing into China with another from the same village to trade, but they could they not find their way back and were caught by traffickers and then sold into marriage. Other women also told of how they were forced or tricked into marriage with Chinese men, treated as slave labour, sold on or subjected to repeated rapes. Not all those who married in China, however, were coerced into it; some did so to secure money for their families. Even if women eluded the traffickers and were not illtreated in China, as illegal immigrants they lived in fear of being found by the Chinese police and sent back to the DPRK. Once forcibly repatriated, they were criminalised as defectors and subject to detention in prison camps. Some women had experienced capture and repatriation a number of times, but still sought escape. How repatriated individuals are treated varies; it is likely to be worse if their defection (seen as treason) is believed to be politically rather than purely economically motivated, while those who can mobilise influential social or political connections may fare better. At the extreme, defectors face indefinite imprisonment, torture and execution. Women’s accounts of repatriation and detention are the most harrowing experiences described in the book. They included being strip-searched, sometimes publicly, including internal body searches, by male guards in search of money they might be concealing. Such searches were often accompanied by torture and horrifying humiliation. The treatment of women who had become pregnant in China, and of their babies, was particularly appalling. One repatriated woman reported seeing prison guards beating a pregnant woman to bring about an abortion and smothering a newborn child. Another told of pregnant women being held together in a small cell, having to watch other women give birth and then the forced starvation of the newborn child until it died. Such babies were unwanted because they were fathered by Chinese men. While she was there, she said, seven dead babies were placed in the toilet to teach women not to betray their country by bringing ‘foreign seeds’ into Korea. More routinely, women experienced forced labour, inadequate food rations, self-criticism sessions, being forced to sing patriotic songs and being beaten on the slightest pretext. The system seemed to dehumanise the guards too, as they took pleasure in taunting and abusing the prisoners. Those women who finally settled in the UK had all endured and witnessed appalling deprivation and brutality before they finally escaped North Korea, viii

Series Editors’ Preface

which inspired some to take up campaigning for human rights. While their activism was experiential, Lim makes it clear that experience alone was not enough to explain why they chose this path. Becoming an activist first required overcoming the fear inspired by the DPRK regime and the repercussions political involvement could have for families left behind in North Korea. Secondly, they had to conquer the feelings of shame deriving from the humiliations they had experienced before they could consider speaking out about violations of their rights. Moreover, a perceptual shift was necessary before these women could grasp the idea of individual human rights, a concept alien to North Korean society. Given these barriers to activism, it is not surprising that the majority preferred to avoid political engagement. Furthermore, politics for North Koreans, as Lim explains, has negative connotations. It is associated with forced politicisation under the DPRK regime through ideological indoctrination and such practices as compulsory self-criticism sessions. Having had every aspect of their lives, and even their thoughts, controlled by others, living in the relative freedom of the UK was experienced as the freedom to avoid politics. Of course, it could be argued that the concept of human rights derives from western or global north societies and is imposed on the rest of the world through international organisations. Lim tackles this relativist view of rights head on, pointing out how it is used by authoritarian regimes to control the population and excuse repression. In the DPRK, this includes denial of the most basic right of sufficient food to avoid starvation while the wealth of the nation is concentrated in the hands of the Kim family and their associates. It took time for women who migrated to the UK to see even this as a deprivation of rights. One woman among Lim’s interlocutors, and a key informant, took a leading role in activism and was instrumental in encouraging other women to become more engaged with the issue of rights. The minority who joined her tended to be better educated than most North Koreans in the UK, more willing to acquire political knowledge and to see the connection between their personal suffering, human rights and politics. While the experiential basis of human rights activism was an important motivator, especially through the sharing of stories of violence, abuse and harassment, their goals were not self-interested. They were not concerned with achieving justice for themselves, but with speaking out for the benefit of others: those still living in the DPRK, those seeking to escape and those struggling with the difficulty of gaining asylum in the UK or other countries. They also saw their activism as a way of repaying those who had supported them in escaping and settling in the UK and some felt that it assuaged the guilt they felt at now having a far better quality of life than those left behind in North Korea. They therefore worked on a number of fronts, for example networking with international organisations to keep the DPRK’s human ix

North Korean Women and Defection

rights violations on the agenda and with local politicians and human rights bodies on issues of immigration and asylum. They did not, however, belong to any formal human rights organisation to avoid having their activities governed by others’ priorities. The accounts of activism that these women provided, then, were relational, other-directed. Lim theorises this form of activism through developing the concept of ‘altruistic political imagination’. This has two elements. First, it captures relationality, the self-other dynamic that connected activists’ own experience with their concern and care for others, and with ideals of reciprocity and responsibility. Secondly, it is future oriented, foregrounding an imagination that envisions the world being other than it is, where what seems currently impossible becomes possible. Being able to see such possibilities is, of course, fundamental to a political and sociological imagination. North Korean women activists live in hope that the North Korean regime could change or collapse. It may seem unassailable, but a regime sustained by indoctrination, repression, fear and keeping the population in ignorance of the actuality of life elsewhere is not totally secure. As Lim points out, there are ways in which some information from the outside world now filters into North Korea, and activists seek to increase this flow of knowledge, as one of Lim’s participants put it, to ‘wake up’ DPRK citizens and engender awareness of the ways in which their rights are routinely violated. It is this hope of change, this ‘visionary imagination’ that leads women activists to take action, that inspires their utopian dream in which North Korean women gain equality and respect and where the rights of all North Koreans are protected. The stories Lim tells of North Korean women’s experiences are distressing and disturbing to read, but there are positive aspects to them. These women have endured much and survived, they have shown courage and resilience and some, at least, are able to imagine a better future not only for themselves but also for others and for the country they have left behind. Lim argues that the concept of altruistic political imagination has, potential applicability beyond North Korea. At least we, as readers, can join with these women in exercising this imagination and hope with them for progressive, egalitarian change in North Korea and elsewhere.

x

Acknowledgements Many people have made important contributions to my journey of writing this book. Firstly, I would like to thank all my research participants, especially the women from North Korea. This book would not have been possible without their voices and stories. Despite the potential risk and danger to their families and themselves posed by the North Korean regime, my participants kindly shared their experiences in China and invaluable insights into the lives of women and men in North Korea. My special thanks go to Ms Park Ji-​Hyun, who has generously offered me her time for my various projects since 2017, including her significant experience and insight into activism. Her positivity and determination have been inspiring and uplifting when I experienced moments of doubt about the future of North Korean human rights. I owe Shannon Kneis huge gratitude for believing in the value of my work and pursuing its publication, having convinced the Editorial Board at Bristol University Press (BUP). I would like to thank Anna Richardson at BUP for her editorial support. I’m also extremely grateful to all the anonymous reviewers who have helped me improve the quality of my book from the initial stage of the proposal to the draft typescript. Particularly, I want to thank the last reviewer who read my draft typescript, and provided constructive and critical feedback. It encouraged me to develop my knowledge further and reassess some of my analyses more critically. I also want to thank Dr Kwon-​Hein Jaok at the University of Heidelberg, who invited me as a visiting lecturer at the Centre for East Asian Studies in 2020–​21. The process of preparing for the module ‘Escaping North Korea: Transnational Experiences and Lives of North Korean Refugees’ and passionate discussions with exceptionally engaged, high-​calibre students during my classes were vital in developing my book. My additional gratitude goes to Professor Anja Senz at the Institute of Chinese Studies in Heidelberg for inviting me to give a special lecture on North Korean women while having provided helpful comments on my draft of a working paper series, which has been incorporated into part of this book.

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North Korean Women and Defection

Thank you to Peng Peng Hatch at Bournemouth University, who has been very supportive and arranged a proofreader. Also, thank you to Steve Cann, who has helped me with proofreading of my drafts. I want to thank our son, Kasska, for making me laugh and giving me a reason to work hard. Lastly, thank you so much, Rob, for spawning my research interest in North Korean defectors and supporting me throughout with your creative ideas and writing advice.

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1

Introduction This book examines the human rights abuses suffered by North Korean women and how some of these women are confronting this abuse through their activism. Based on this examination, I argue that –​ albeit with small numbers and slow progress –​such a battle is critical for addressing North Korean women’s human rights. I further argue that tackling women’s rights issues will have a ripple effect on children and men due to overlapping characteristics that affect all North Koreans, together with their interconnected lives. The economic crisis of the mid-​1990s in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) brought some significant changes to the country. The food crisis forced women to take on the role of breadwinner, which challenged the conventional understanding of gender in North Korea and was consistent with the important role that women have played in other countries during times of famine (see Kinealy et al, 2016). This crisis also led to the exodus of many ordinary people to China, South Korea and Western countries, such as the UK, to find food and better lives; the majority of those who left were women: nearly 75 per cent of North Koreans who entered China (CRS, 2007) and 84.2 per cent who fled to South Korea (Ministry of Unification, 2022). However, despite these seemingly profound shifts in North Korean society (because of the famine and subsequent changes in the role of women as breadwinners), many would say that the human rights situation in the DPRK has not improved. Women’s human rights remain a serious concern that requires urgent and weighty action from powerful global actors and states. It is in this context that this book has been written. When I started my research on North Korean defectors1 and their human rights activism in 2016, the gendered dimension emerged as a striking feature: women were shouldering the burden of feeding their families as well as being subjected to various forms of gender-​based exploitation and violence. This led me to change the focus of my research to women and their lived experiences. It has not always been an easy journey for me because the majority of women understandably do not want to talk about their 1

North Korean Women and Defection

harrowing experiences. As I delved into North Korean defectors’ human rights activism in the UK, including women’s, I also realized that only a few individuals were involved in this activism. While there are numerous North Korean human rights activist networks outside the DPRK, based in South Korea, the US and the UK, for example, only a small number of these activists are targeting the women’s rights agenda. As much as women’s human rights require urgent attention, for women activists working for this cause, it is a taxing battle. For strategic reasons discussed in Chapter 4, North Korean women’s activism in the UK is not directly associated with an organization, unlike most DPRK human rights activism elsewhere. Instead, it is led by a woman defector who has become a prominent activist, using her personal experiences of human rights violations in China and the DPRK, with the help of a handful of other women refugees who have undergone similar exploitation. In this respect, it is not a recognizable network tied to an institutional setting in a conventional sense. Nevertheless, this does not render the activism insignificant. In fact, my argument is that these women’s activism is critical in addressing North Korean women’s human rights. Borrowing from Crozier-​De Rosa and Mackie (2019), I even propose that they are in the process of making history. I am not suggesting this in the sense that these activists will all of a sudden transform North Korean women’s lives by winning secure protection of their fundamental rights. Rather, I am arguing that, without a fight, one cannot challenge injustice and that the path they have embarked upon is a vital step towards transforming the seemingly impossible into an achievable goal. As proven so far, the Northern regime has not been altered significantly since the inception of Kim Jong Un. Despite continual endeavours by human rights activist organizations and individuals, North Korean human rights issues remain grave concerns. Given this, it will be a long-​term struggle to bring meaningful change to the country’s handling of human rights, as indicated by my participants. There is a dearth of published material on the DPRK’s human rights activism, let alone women’s activism, except for Song (2017) and Yeo and Chubb (2019). While these works have made salient contributions to shedding light on this poorly understood field, the voices of individuals are largely missing. This has created a serious gap in the area, especially the absence of women’s voices. It is critical to take on women’s views because they play a vital role in all aspects of North Korean society at the most basic level; it is largely women who become involved in entrepreneurial activities during times of poverty to save their families. This has significant social, economic and political implications for the future of the DPRK. Overlooking women’s voices would mean a lost opportunity to gain an extremely valuable insight into North Korean society and women’s 2

Introduction

activism. Unlike the above mentioned publications, my book is built on phenomenology, which places the voices of women defectors at the centre. This throws light on their inner worlds and subjective perspectives rooted in their lived experiences. I aim to achieve four objectives in this book. Firstly, I seek to elucidate human rights abuses against North Korean women through critical and in-​ depth analyses of their narratives of lived experiences inside and outside the DPRK. While there is already a body of publications that has documented this issue, my work is an addition to this and it offers the critical perspective of women, which until now has been overlooked. I bring together disaggregated information using a circular framework to critically discuss the maltreatment experienced by North Korean women, linking it to relevant laws and feminist arguments, as well as adding new testimonies. Secondly, developing from this, I explore the personal accounts of North Korean women defectors on their journey to becoming human rights activists, fighting against the regime to reclaim women’s (and children’s and men’s) rights. Their narratives highlight the barriers and setbacks they face as well as the strategies they adopt to offset such obstacles. However, most importantly, I aim to illuminate the vitality of women’s rights protection, not only for individuals but also for the future of North Korea, considering the critical role that women have played since the collapse of its economy in the 1990s. Thirdly, I seek to contribute to methodological debates by using a phenomenological lens and exploring the challenges arising from studying the experiences of North Korean women defectors. Fourthly, I intend to fill the gap by developing a theoretical concept, Altruistic Political Imagination (API), founded on the narratives of these activists about their motivators for activism. API refers to imagination that arises in association with politics and political movement in the interests of others, and it envisions a better future for a particular society or community. This act of imagining better future lives for other people becomes the principal driver of individual and/​ or collective action that is directed towards achieving the imagined outcomes for the benefit of others (and the self). I begin the next section by presenting changes and constants in North Korea since the mid-​1990s. In the following section, I examine the discourse and treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in recent years in order to situate North Korean defectors’ experiences in a broader global context. The stories of North Korean refugees and asylum seekers are in some ways consistent with those of people from other nation-​states who have been forced to leave their countries for survival. However, North Korea embodies a unique status as a totalitarian state that has removed the fundamental right of people to move freely, through the criminalization of those who leave the country without permission (Lee et al, 2020). In particular, women 3

North Korean Women and Defection

face distinctive challenges as a result of the intersection between push and pull factors in the DPRK and China. This requires the consideration of specific justice issues pertaining to North Korean women refugees, which is the focus of the ensuing section. Following this, I examine DPRK human rights debates. Next, I discuss North Korean women’s human rights activism, starting with conceptualizations of the term, ‘activism’. In the final section, I provide a brief outline of the book.

The DPRK since 1994 Since 1994, North Korea has undergone transitions in its leadership from Kim Jong Il (1994–​2011) to Kim Jong Un (since 2011), following the death of the former. This period has also been marked by severe famine and economic crisis, which has driven the rise of the informal economy. Researchers trace the origins of the DRPK’s economic problems to multiple developments in the late 1980s and its heavy reliance on external aid from the Soviet Union, despite its Juche2 ideology and proclamation of self-​reliance as its central pillar (Noland, 2003; Green, 2016). Noland (2003) suggests that the North Korean regime implemented numerous agricultural policies around 1987 that caused harmful effects in farming and diminished land capacity through the overuse of chemical fertilizers, continual cropping and the exploitation of hillsides, which led to devastating floods. Compounding this issue was the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, which created a shock wave across North Korea’s economy as the Union accounted for over 50 per cent of its trade, with most of its coal, refined oil and steel supplied by the Soviets (  Joo, 2010; Dukalskis, 2016). The death of Kim Il Sung on 8 July 1994 was another possible contributing factor, causing a nationwide panic that destabilized the already fragile and failing system (Greenhill, 2016; Green, 2016). Fahy (2019) claims that the main culprit for the 1990s’ famine lies in the government’s policies, which prioritized ideological programmes over providing food security for its people. These multifaceted factors caused the collapse of the Public Distribution System (PDS), which drove the emergence of the shadow economy (Dukalskis, 2016) or marketization from below (Haggard and Noland, 2012), and this has continued up until today. To secure basic sustenance, households and other social units, such as military and local party agencies, became involved in entrepreneurial activities, and these have become the main source of food and income since 1993. This informal economy generated significant social changes and resulted in increasing inequality and rampant corruption (Haggard and Noland, 2012). More importantly, the rise of marketization triggered changes in gender roles as women became the main breadwinners (Kang, 2008). This transition in the female role brought modifications in

4

Introduction

gender policies, social relations and people’s perceptions of women (Park, 2011; Cho et al, 2020). Additionally, women’s voices became stronger, and their value systems began to change, as they developed the desire for freedom and independence from the state through their market activities. This has been demonstrated in some women’s initiation of divorce from unhappy marriages (Cho et al, 2020). Reflecting both these changes and international pressures, the DPRK enacted the Women’s Rights Act in 2010 (Hosaniak, 2013). Although this might have had some symbolic significance in potentially inducing behavioural changes in women’s lives, in reality it has failed to produce mould-​breaking effects. In fact, many of the policies are incongruous with the notion of rights and freedoms, with women continuously facing sexist norms and unequal gender relations (  Jung and Dalton, 2006; Yang, 2018; Cho et al, 2020). Furthermore, shifts in gender relations have taken place unevenly across the country, with the most substantial changes occurring in the regions bordering China, such as North Hamgyong and Ryanggang Provinces, due to the considerable economic transitions in these areas (Schwekendiek and Mercier, 2016). The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR, 2019) similarly finds continuing discrepancies in the standard of living between provinces, as well as between urban and rural regions in North Korea. Congruent with the link between gender and regional disparities found in the DPRK, urban areas across the Global South have experienced the feminization of populations due to increasing numbers of women migrating to cities for work and marriage (Chant, 2013). However, despite this feminization and the allure of freedom in urban communities, gender inequalities in the types of employment, renumeration and access to physical space continue, creating substantial barriers for women seeking to benefit from urban prosperity (Chant, 2013; United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-​HABITAT), 2013). In the same vein, some benefits have been offered to North Korean women –​especially those of the upper-​middle class –​in urban areas, such as Pyongyang, with access to high-​ends goods from other countries, for example China and South Korea. Alongside this, these women –​when compared to their rural counterparts –​are experiencing more freedom to seek marriages based on love rather than being arranged (Cho et al, 2020). In addition, more opportunities (for instance, to cross borders to other nation-​states and/​or to accumulate money) have been available to women in the regions close to China through their participation in market activities, as noted by Schwekendiek and Mercier (2016). However, such changes in a few women’s lives have not led to the subversion of the DPRK’s deeply entrenched gender structure, and women still face a wide array of discrimination (Eom and Kim, 2016; Cho et al, 2020).

5

North Korean Women and Defection

Along with debates over these social and cultural changes, some scholars have argued that there have been changes in the political economy since the reign of Kim Jong Un began, through the re-​emphasis on economic development to improve people’s livelihoods. This is reflected in the shift in 2013 from the military-​first Songun policy to the Byungjin policy, which entails the parallel development of both military and economic sectors (Cathcart et al, 2017). However, such claims are disputable, as observed by Yeo (2021) in his examination of the development of the informal market and its implications for economic and social change in North Korea. According to Yeo, there are two different schools of thought regarding the relationship between the DPRK state and the market. From one perspective, the state continues its control over the market through ‘rent’ collected from market traders and crackdowns on the new moneyed class, called donju.3 On the other hand, another school contends that a gradual diffusion of power from the state to society is taking place, thanks to informal social networks established in the market, which empower ordinary people. However, empirical data analysed by Yeo (2021) suggests no evidence for social change so far, with the state continuing to maintain a tight grip on people’s lives. This is echoed by Green and Denney (2017), who argue that there have been no profound or substantive changes in North Korean politics, despite the introduction of such policy reforms. The vulnerability of the regime, which was established on the hereditary inheritance of power and its dictatorial rule depends heavily on the military for its own survival (S. Cho, 2020). Hence, the principle of Songun remains a dominant doctrine in policy making (Denney et al, 2017). At the same time, economic development is essentially centred on the protection of the Kim family’s power, rather than on the aim of improving the wider economy. This is exemplified by the existence of the relatively productive ‘Royal Court Economy’4 that funds the private interests of the dynasty and its elite class through mostly ‘illicit’ economic activities, which is kept separate from the failing civilian economy (Kim, 2011; Green and Denney, 2017). Consistent with these moves, the regime continues to rely on the revised historical narratives of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, ‘the new blend of “Kimilsungism-​Kimjongilism” ’, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, rather than taking an autonomous stance free from the past (Cathcart, 2017, p 9). Kimilsungism-​Kimjongilism refers to a revolutionary ideology, founded by Kim Il Sung and further developed by him and his son Kim Jong Il. The concept of Juche forms the central pillar of Kimilsungism-​Kimjongilism, supported by the concept of Songun that gives importance to the military ‘as the hardcore force’ in protecting independence and socialism (Korean Association of Social Scientists, 2016, p 7). To implement the Juche ideology, the Ten Principles for the Establishment of the One-​Ideology System that govern the everyday lives of the North 6

Introduction

Korean people were officially announced by Kim Jong Il in 1974. These Ten Principles are as follows (Collins, 2017, pp 3–​4): 1. Struggle with all your life to paint the entire society with the one colour of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung’s revolutionary thought. 2. Respect and revere highly and with loyalty the Great Leader Kim Il Sung. 3. Make absolute the authority of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung. 4. Accept the Great Leader Kim Il Sung’s revolutionary thought as your belief and take the Great Leader’s instructions as your creed. 5. Observe absolutely the principle of unconditional execution in carrying out the instructions of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung. 6. Rally the unity of ideological intellect and revolutionary solidarity around the Great Leader Kim Il Sung. 7. Learn from the Great Leader Kim Il Sung and master communist dignity, the methods of revolutionary projects, and the people’s work styles. 8. Preserve dearly the political life the Great Leader Kim Il Sung has bestowed upon you, and repay loyally for the Great Leader’s boundless political trust and considerations with high political awareness and skill. 9. Establish a strong organizational discipline so that the entire Party, the entire people, and the entire military will operate uniformly under the sole leadership of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung. 10. The great revolutionary accomplishments pioneered by the Great Leader Kim Il Sung must be succeeded and perfected by hereditary successions until the end. It is compulsory for every North Korean to study and memorize the Ten Principles, to apply them in their everyday lives and to evaluate themselves in terms of whether or not they have been living up to the Principles at weekly self-​criticism sessions (Collins, 2017). In a more recent debate, Kim and Jang (2021) suggest that a newly emerging ideology has been developing since 2021, called Kim-​Jong-​Un-​ ism, although they predict that this ‘new’ ideology will not diverge much from the central principles of Kimilsungism-​Kimjongilism that have guided the current regime. Supporting this view, the government proclaimed at the 8th Party Congress held in January 2021 that ‘the WPK (The Workers’ Party of Korea) is a party that upholds the ideology of Kim-​il-​sung-​Kim-​ jong-​il-​ism’ and ‘the WPK considers Kim-​il-​sung-​Kim-​jong-​il-​ism to be the only guiding ideology’ (Kim and Jang, 2021, p 2). Adding to this, Kim Jong Un publicly announced another economic crisis and ‘Arduous March’ at a ruling WPK conference in April 2021 (Yoon, 2021). However, Joung (2021), drawing on an analysis of the DPRK’s Voluntary National Reviews (VNR)5 report, proposes that North Korea’s food situation in 2020 was relatively stable, contradicting Kim’s claims of 7

North Korean Women and Defection

‘food anxiety’ during the COVID-​19 pandemic. This might be an indication that Kim’s regime is exploiting the pandemic to regain its control over people’s lives, which has been weakened via the rise of the informal economy and the infiltration of foreign products, by completely blocking the borders and stopping the permeation of outside information (Yoon, 2021). In contrast to Joung’s suggestion, however, the World Food Programme (2019) revealed that more than 10 million North Koreans (40 per cent of the population) were food insecure and in urgent need of assistance. With few international allies, North Korea previously looked to China for support during times of economic crisis and was provided with enormous food assistance from Beijing during 2019–​20. However, in 2021, climatic disasters, rising prices and border restrictions limited this aid, aggravating food scarcity in the DPRK (WFP, 2021). Consistent with this, the report by the UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on the DPRK (Quintana, 2022) raises serious concerns about worsening human rights conditions under the elevated isolation of the state since 2020. One of the major issues is gaining access to essential items, such as food, due to tightened border controls, which have ravaged the market activity that is a vital channel for accessing such necessities. Alongside this, the policy is now to shoot any border-​crossers, and the Law on the Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture established in December 2020 allows unjustifiably harsh punishment, for example, the death penalty, for those who access foreign information (Quintana, 2022). On the basis of these, it is arguable that the much-​anticipated changes under Kim Jong Un have not materialized; despite some suggestions of modifications, the regime’s totalitarian grip remains firm, supported by the highly bureaucratized Korean Workers’ Party and Organization & Guidance Department (Collins, 2019). The economic crisis led many people to flee North Korea in search of food and money as a result of the failure of the PDS and severe food shortages, as noted at the beginning of this chapter. Those who have crossed the borders to China are largely women, due to a constellation of reasons founded on the patriarchal structure: married women were dropped from state enterprises, unlike men who saw a steady decrease in their employment (see Chapter 3 for further discussion); men were more systematically controlled and monitored due to their public roles as employees; and the enforcement of illegality for absence from work was applied less strictly to women than to men (Haggard and Noland, 2012; Lankov and Kim, 2014). These loopholes enabled many women to leave the country clandestinely (Park, 2011). In addition, other possible contributing factors to the feminization of defection are the DPRK’s Military-​First Policy, which conscripts more men for longer service duration, in combination with the legalization of small private enterprises that has enabled women to amass capital, allowing greater opportunities for cross-​border mobility (Sung and Cho, 2018). In 8

Introduction

tandem with this, there is high demand for North Korean women as brides in China among unmarried rural Chinese men. This is due to the lopsided gender ratio as a consequence of China’s historic one-​child policy and young women’s migration to urban areas to find work. There is also a broader demand in the Chinese sex industry (Robinson, 2019). Hence, North Korean women’s vulnerable circumstances, rooted in their desperate need for survival and illegal status, have become a major cause of exploitation by human traffickers and smugglers, consistent with the experiences of women from other countries and those of forced migrants.

Refugees and asylum seekers in the global context Hostile treatment of forced migrants In recent years, we have witnessed a global refugee catastrophe as a result of high levels of ‘social expulsion, especially in the Global South’ (Sassen, 2014, p 63), caused by civil wars, food insecurity, ethnic cleansing and environmental disasters. Global displacement has risen significantly over the past 50 years (Fransen and De Hass, 2022), and a record high number of 89.3 million people were forcefully displaced worldwide at the end of 2021 due to ‘persecution, conflict, violence, [and] human rights violations’ (UNHCR, 2022, p 5). The majority of refugees are hosted by neighbouring countries with emerging economies (UNHCR, 2021–​22). Notwithstanding this general trend, the main reasons why countries in Northern or Western Europe have attracted forced migrants and have been the focus of the mass media are because these are the geographically closest well-​off regions that are also relatively safe and accessible from the Middle East and Africa. Moreover, some European countries, such as Germany, have a reputation for welcoming asylum seekers and providing support for them to become settled in their new homes (Kaplow, 2015). However, accompanying the rise of globally displaced persons has been the hostile treatment they have received in Western and East Asian countries with advanced economies (Seol and Skrentny, 2009; Berry et al, 2015; Amnesty, 2018; Sheller, 2018). This antagonism is also reflected in the negative depiction of refugees in the media as victims and/​or threats (Berry et al, 2015; Smets et al, 2019; Norwegian Refugee Council, 2022) and as ‘the unwanted invader’ (Parker, 2015, p 1), sending out misinformation as well as creating misperceptions among the public (Amnesty, 2018; d’Haenens and Joris, 2019). In tune with these, Kotef (2015, p 10) argues that the ‘government of mobility’ is a central facet of globalization, in lieu of a ‘simple openness of borders’. According to Kotef, the construction of the liberal subject, who is epitomized by freedom of movement, coincides with the creation of the ‘threatening’ subject, whose movement is restricted and controlled. While refugee issues have dominated many European news headlines in a sensational manner, being presented as a ‘crisis’ in recent years, 9

North Korean Women and Defection

refugees themselves have largely been invisible, objectified and dehumanized in mainstream media. Based on their content analysis of European media discourse around asylum seekers and refugees, Berry et al (2015) report a highly negative depiction of these people, through the use of such terms as ‘bogus’, ‘illegals’, ‘irregulars’ and ‘a tidal wave’, as though they are threatening natural forces moving en masse. Such a negative and incorrect representation by the media is particularly palpable in the UK and Spain, with the former often linking them to dishonest behaviour and/​or presenting them as a burden or drain on public resources and social welfare (Berry et al, 2015). However, the threat of refugees flooding into developed countries is an immensely disproportionate misrepresentation. According to mid-​2021 data (2021–​22) from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 85 per cent of refugees are taken by developing countries, and the least developed countries provide asylum to 27 per cent of the world’s total refugees. The same data also identifies four of the top five destination countries, which host 35 per cent of refugees, as having either developing or least developed status (the fifth state being Germany), with Turkey at the top, followed by Columbia, Uganda and Pakistan in descending order. Along with this skewed representation, refugee movements in parts of the world outside Europe have been mostly overlooked. As outlined by the UNHCR (2022b), there are large numbers of refugees moving between Syria and the neighbouring countries of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan; between Afghanistan and Pakistan; between Myanmar and Bangladesh; and between North Korea and China. This clearly indicates that the negative discourse around asylum seekers and refugees in developed Western states is a social and political construct that spuriously represents the reality without sufficient supporting evidence. Marfleet (2006) traces the exclusionary regime of forced migrants from the publication of alarmist writings, such as Kaplan’s (1994) ‘The coming anarchy’. Founded on his prediction of an inundation of refugees to the US from poorer countries in the 1980s and 1990s, Kaplan proposes their containment ‘within the zones of crisis’. Marfleet additionally identifies Huntington’s (1993, 1997) ‘Clash of civilisations’, which forewarns of conflict between non-​Western states (for example, China and Islamic nations) and Western Europe, and which gained wide currency among European politicians and Eurocrats. According to Marfleet (2006), by the mid-​1990s this had led to the formation of antagonistic governmentality towards migrants from countries that are seen as failing to achieve neoliberal economic development and/​or as security threats to Western nation-​states. However, notwithstanding commonly-​held assumptions around the negative attitudes of developed Western countries, hostility towards refugees and asylum seekers is equally prevalent in countries outside these nation-​ states (Alrababa’h et al, 2021). For instance, as the number of Syrian refugees increased, public opinion in Turkey became less welcoming, with some 10

Introduction

people seeing them as competitors for scarce resources (De Coninck et al, 2021), but more as security and terrorist threats (Getmansky, 2021). Much the same is also seen in the treatment of Rohingya refugees fleeing from Myanmar to Bangladesh (HRW, 2022). Antagonistic attitudes towards asylum seekers and refugees, together with poor records of accepting them, are also commonly identified in wealthy East Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea (Seol and Skrentny, 2009; Amnesty, 2018; Lee and Slavney, 2021; Rashid, 2021; NRC, 2022). According to Domínguez (2014), East Asian nation-​states have restrictionist immigration and refugee policies and have adopted a narrow definition of refugees, while setting a high benchmark for recognizing applicants as ‘true’ asylum seekers. Japan, for example, has the overall lowest recognition rate of refugees of all developed countries: despite being the third richest country in the world, it has only accepted a total of 1,107 refugees, equivalent to 0.001 per cent of its population, over the last decade (NRC, 2022). By the same token, the Republic of Korea (ROK) had recognized as refugees or had granted humanitarian status to a total of only 3,452 persons (excluding North Koreans) as of 30 November 2020 (UNHCR, 2021). Seol and Skrentny (2009) identify one of the possible causes of this as an inward-​looking ‘developmental state’ that prioritizes economic growth over rights, and the protection of domestic labour markets. In addition, hard-​ to-​navigate bureaucracy and inadequate legal systems operate as deterrents to asylum seekers attempting to pursue the administrative process to gain refugee status (Seol and Skrentny, 2009; Domínguez, 2014). On top of this, unlike in Europe, there is no regional institution in Asia that pushes these countries to implement humanitarian policies (Domínguez, 2014). Moreover, consistent with Western countries, Islamophobia and fear of Muslims as potential terrorists have influenced the negative media discourse and governmental responses towards asylum seekers from Middle Eastern and African countries, as illuminated by strong opposition towards the 550 Yemenis who arrived in Jeju Island, South Korea in 2018 (Amnesty, 2018; Haas, 2018; Kwon, 2019; Lee and Slavney, 2021).

Everyday bordering Reflecting such hostility and mistrust, border controls for refugees and asylum seekers have been tightened by Western states (Betts, 2013; Hansen, 2014; Sassen, 2014; Fontanari and Ambrosini, 2018; Seller, 2018; Cassidy, 2019, 2020; Yuval-​Davis et al, 2019; Irgil, 2022; Walsh et al, 2022). This is paradoxical considering the concurrent increase in economic liberalization through the international operation of large corporations and relatively free movement of finance (Sassen, 2014). Sheller (2018) criticizes the way in which the fundamental principles of equality and justice have been 11

North Korean Women and Defection

violated through the downright inequality of border-​crossings and flagrant exclusionary practices based on race, gender and class. For Balibar and Williams (2002, p 71), borders signify multiple meanings and modes beyond ‘the outer limit of territories’. Additionally, rather than being marginal, borders have become the centre of the public sphere, penetrating everywhere from cities where those with citizenship co-​exist with those who do not, and zones where extreme prosperity meets extreme poverty. Consistent with Balibar and Williams (2002), Yuval-​Davis et al (2019) argue that borders and bordering have become praxes permeating every sphere of social, economic and political life as central controlling mechanisms that create social stratifications through their exclusionary practices beyond the ‘conventional’ sense associated with the geographical boundaries of nation-​states: Instead of being found at the edge, separating and connecting one state to another, borders have now spread so as to be everywhere. Airports, train stations, even places of work, worship, and living can be borders. Borders can be situated in embassies as well as at the heart of metropolitan cities. Any place has become a borderland; and borderlands can no longer be determined exclusively in relation to specific territories and states. (Yuval-​Davis et al, 2019, p 17) Thus, everyday bordering affects not only migrants but also individuals within society through public reporting and strengthened police powers to check people’s immigration status and detain them. Yuval-​Davis et al (2019) further elucidate the implications of living in the grey zones –​in which asylum seekers must wait for their decision without the rights to work or fully engage in social life –​for people’s health and their ability to plan for the future. The ongoing precarity, accompanied by uncertainty and transience, stemming from temporary living arrangements, detention and the threat of deportation, unsurprisingly causes anxiety as well as having serious implications for physical and mental health. This quotidian feature of bordering also resonates with the experiences of North Korean refugees in China, who are not even deemed to be refugees by the Chinese state, but rather illegal migrants, as will be discussed in Chapter 3. The state of insecurity and fear does not disappear once they manage to cross the border into China, often using dangerous methods; in reality, such precarity persists or even becomes aggravated by the continual threat of being caught by the Chinese police and forcefully deported back to the DPRK. Consonant with the experiences of refugees and North Korean women border-​crossers, transgressing a border does not equate with the transition from one identity to a different one. Rather than a symbol of rigid division, the borderline operates as a fluid space ‘in which differences oscillate, collide, process’ (Raunig, 2007, p 253). In this sense, North Korean women do not 12

Introduction

undergo a seamlessly linear shift in their identity; they retain their multiple subjectivities, and their precarious circumstances continue to profoundly affect their lives in China and other countries.

Gendered and racialized bordering While antagonism and insecurity affect all forced migrants, differential treatment and modes along lines of gender and ‘race’/​ethnicity characterize the experiences of many refugees. Thus, it is important to examine the interconnected relationships between migration, borders and social categories, as proposed by Hegde (2021). Stratified social systems and structures operate in tandem with hostile border regimes that control raced and gendered bodies. Through this working relationship, the exertion of power and policing at the border reinforces and consolidates existing systems of racial and sexual discrimination (Hegde, 2021, p 1670). In a similar fashion, Holzberg et al (2021) point out the growing intensification of racialized border regimes. These researchers argue that bordering regimes have become hotbeds for sexual violence, in contrast to the depiction of borders as defence against such harms and dangers from foreigners. In reality, sexual violence forms part of border control: for instance, guards may offer help in immigration cases in return for sexual favours from female migrants, and the constant threats of deportation hinder women from reporting the violence they have experienced (Freedman, 2016). In conjunction with this, Freedman (2016) demonstrates that female refugees experience gender-​based violence both in their home countries and during their journeys to other countries, from smugglers and traffickers, male refugees and border guards, as well as their own male partners. Freedman additionally notes the pernicious impact of increasing restrictions on entry into the EU and the prospect of closed borders, which intensify women’s vulnerability to violence at the hands of smugglers and the demand for sex in exchange for passage. This kind of ‘extreme bordering’ is echoed in the findings of Mai et al (2021, p 1608), who studied the targeting of female migrant sex workers under the banner of ‘sexual humanitarianism’, which deploys repressive and racialized bordering techniques in neoliberal contexts. Mai et al argue that, under this approach, certain groups of migrants are problematized and interceded upon by humanitarian organizations and non-​ governmental organizations (NGOs), based on the assumed vulnerabilities of these people. These work together with neo-​abolitionist policies targeting the removal of all sex work, which translate into detrimental policies exacerbating the exploitation and deportation of migrants, especially women. Resonating with these studies, the experiences of North Korean female refugees who enter China are directly shaped by their ethnicity and gender, with both push and pull factors forcing them to cross the borders. The highly sexist social system in the DPRK has created a loophole for women, 13

North Korean Women and Defection

enabling them to evade state surveillance and to maximize their gendered opportunities for survival, along with demands from China for cheap brides, domestic maids and sex workers. While North Korean women provide vital means for the survival of not only their families but also the DPRK’s economic and political system, as well as low-​cost labour and solutions for social issues caused by China’s skewed gender ratios, they have become the unfair targets of policing and state control. Mbembe (2003) argues that necropolitics (the politics of death) characterizes a key technique of governance in post-​colonial nation-​states, and points out the inadequacy of Foucault’s (1979) notion of biopower through which modern states exercise power over the sphere of life. Hence, for Mbembe, sovereignty is closely interwoven with the exercise of the power to kill, the power to determine who lives and who dies. Wright (2011) similarly suggests that the Foucauldian sense of biopolitics, which controls the bodies of the population, works in combination with necropolitics, because the protection of the lives of certain parts of the population is justified by the deaths of others. Drawing on the Mexican state’s responsibility for the deaths of ‘public women’ who were involved in prostitution, Wright (2011) sharply criticizes the implicit yet significant role of the Mexican government in causing these deaths by diverting the blame onto the women themselves. I argue that necropolitics also constitutes a critical aspect of the controlling techniques in North Korea; the murders committed by the state and the potential threat of such deaths are crucial for the Kim family in retaining a full grip on its people. Death in this milieu implies not just the annihilation of a physical body but also symbolic death, the social death of certain individuals and their families through the denunciation of their crimes and the stripping of any opportunities in life that lasts for generations, as embodied in the Songbun6 system and Yeonjwaje,7 similar to ‘slave life’ –​‘a form of death-​in-​ life’ (Mbembe, 2003, p 21). Necropolitics extends to those women who are forcefully returned to the DPRK while carrying a child whose father is not a North Korean. In this sense, the gendered and racialized bordering permeates not only the receiving state, which excludes and discriminates against women from other cultures and states, but also the exit regime, which controls the ‘racial’ purity of the nation by killing babies and foetuses carried by North Korean female returnees. In the eyes of the regime, these pregnant women embody the transgression of ‘racial’ boundaries through the act of mixing their blood with that of Chinese men, tainting their racial purity as one nation. At the same time, the Chinese government’s forcible repatriation of North Korean women and its refusal to recognize their children born through such ‘racial’/​ ethnic mixing clearly demonstrates the percolation of gendered and racialized bordering in China as an exclusionary and stratifying praxis. As discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, this discriminatory practice of controlling North Korean 14

Introduction

female refugees has significant ramifications for those who have children in China (children who are effectively stateless subjects); for instance, leaving them behind without adequate carers or state support if they are deported back to the DPRK.8 This begs an urgent question of human rights and justice for these children.

Justice for North Korean female forced migrants China treats all undocumented North Koreans as illegal economic migrants and not as refugees, thus claiming that they are not qualified for protection under the United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees (Charny, 2004; Muico, 2005; Congressional Research Service (CRS), 2007; Aldrich, 2011). Despite being a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, together with being a member of the Executive Committee of the Office of the UNHCR (Charny, 2004), China has violated its obligations in numerous ways, such as North Korean defectors’ rights to access courts and freedom of movement (Aldrich, 2011). Consistent with this, China’s treatment of North Korean border-​crossers has been harsh, forcibly sending them back to the DPRK since the sharp rise in those entering China ‘illegally’ during the late 1990s, having abandoned its generally tolerant approach towards North Koreans in its territory (Eom and Kim, 2016). However, China claims that its treatment of North Koreans is justified, based on bilateral treaties with the DPRK that lay the foundations for China to deport any ‘illegitimate’ North Korean migrants back to the North (Charny, 2004). But, as stated by Muico (2005), China has violated a bilateral agreement with the UNHCR, signed in 1995, that establishes the former’s obligation to provide international and humanitarian protection to all refugees in its territory, as well as unhindered access for UNHCR staff to refugees at all times, through its repeated refusal to honour either of these duties. In contrast to its insular foreign policy prior to the late 1990s, China has since developed ‘a more sophisticated, coherent, and internationalist foreign policy’ as it has undergone transformations in its economy and relations with other nation-​states (Kurlantzick and Mason 2006, p 34). As a result, it allows asylum seekers of all nationalities to seek refugee status in China by openly approaching UNHCR offices in China (Kurlantzick and Mason, 2006). However, North Koreans are explicitly excluded from this, stemming from the aforementioned special bilateral agreements between the two countries, as well as China’s concerns about the repercussions of any political instability in the DPRK on China (CRS, 2007). The 1951 UN Convention defines a refugee: As a person who owing to a well-​found fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social 15

North Korean Women and Defection

group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country. The Refugee Convention therefore clearly articulates its principle against refoulment by never sending back those whose lives would be threatened on their return to their exit country. However, the definition created to support displaced people in post-​war Europe by focusing on persecution is not appropriate to protect today’s refugees and asylum seekers who flee their nation-​states owing to other factors, such as food insecurity and environmental crisis (Betts, 2013; Sheller, 2018). Compared to its notion of refugees, the UNHCR glossary (n.d.) defines an economic migrant as someone who moves to another country ‘purely for economic reasons unrelated to the refugee definition, or in order to seek material improvements in their livelihood’. Should they elect to return home, they would ‘continue to receive the protection of their government’ (UNHCR, 2016). Following this definition, North Korean women escapees can be more accurately characterized as forced migrants (Muico, 2005). As discussed earlier, the exodus of many North Korean women was caused by the famine and economic crisis, which forced them to leave their country in search of food for survival. Moreover, based on the UNHCR’s delineation, economic migrants should receive protection from their own government on their return. However, far from receiving protection, any border-​crossing by North Koreans without government permission is a crime and those who return become subject to varying degrees of punishment. This criminalization of unauthorized exit of any citizens by the DPRK government provides a justification for North Koreans in China to be protected under the UN Convention, founded on their status as refugees sur place (Charny, 2004; Muico, 2005; Aldrich, 2011). In other words, even if they did not meet the Convention’s categorization of refugee status when they left the DPRK, they have genuine grounds for fear of persecution from the regime if they return, and thus should be provided with appropriate protection as refugees sur place. Nonetheless, the prospect of this remains bleak. As suggested by Lankov (2004), granting refugee status to North Koreans will have two significant ramifications for China: it will be more financially costly because the Chinese government will have to provide some form of aid; and if China treats them as refugees, this will be likely to encourage more defection from North Korea and thus destabilize the regime and regional politics. This potentiality of mass migration to act as a destabilizing effect is echoed by Greenhill (2016), who provides an insightful account of how activists and NGOs working for human rights attempted to deploy the 16

Introduction

mass migration of North Korean people into neighbouring countries as a means to bring down the DPRK state; a standpoint supported by President George W. Bush in 2003. However, according to Greenhill (2016), such attempts failed due to opposition from both China and South Korea, who were extremely concerned about the unsettling and costly impact of the Northern regime’s collapse and a large influx of migrants from the DPRK. As argued by Lankov (2004) and other scholars (Linantud and Beatty, 2011; Shulong, 2015; Frank, 2016), national security and geopolitical power struggles take priority over North Korean human rights, thus hindering progress in tackling the issue. The inadequacy of international society’s measures to protect many forcibly displaced people is captured in the concept of ‘survival migration’ proposed by Betts (2013, p 5), which refers to: People who are outside their country of origin because of an existential threat for which they have no access to a domestic remedy or resolution … It is based on the recognition that what matters is not privileging particular causes of movement but rather clearly identifying a threshold of fundamental rights which, when unavailable in a country of origin, requires that the international community allow people to cross an international border and receive access to temporary or permanent sanctuary. Refugees are one type of survival migration, but many people who are not recognised as refugees also fall within the category. Betts uses North Korea as an example of a dictatorial state that simply denies the basic human rights of its citizens. International states’ failure to provide basic security for displaced North Korean people in China resonates with the deficiency of the 1951 Convention because many North Koreans have fled the country due to reasons that are not directly related to persecution. The urgent need for collective action to protect forcibly displaced people is also echoed in the writing of Butler (2004, pp 17–​18): Our collective responsibility not merely as a nation, but as part of an international community based on a commitment to equality and non-​violent cooperation, requires that we ask how these conditions came about, and endeavor to re-​create social and political conditions on more sustaining grounds. This means, hearing beyond what we are able to hear. In a similar fashion, Sheller (2018, p 1) argues for mobility justice as ‘one of the crucial political and ethical issues of our day’. Thus, justice debates over North Korean human rights are vital. 17

North Korean Women and Defection

DPRK human rights debates Human rights, as upheld in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 1948, form a relatively new concept that was established after the Second World War to prevent a repetition of atrocities committed by groups such as the Nazis. The UN (1987) defines human rights as: Those rights, which are inherent in our nature and without which we cannot live as human beings. Human rights and fundamental freedoms allow us to fully develop and use our human qualities, our intelligence, our talents and our conscience and to satisfy our spiritual and other needs. As Freeman (2017) suggests, these human rights are similar to the Lockean concept of natural rights located in the Western liberal tradition. Therefore, they reflect a Western bias by emphasizing rights rather than duties, individual rather than collective rights, civil and political rather than economic, social and cultural rights, and a lack of explicit concern with the problem of imperialism. However, the concept of human rights has evolved since 1948, with important contributions being made by non-​Western states, including the development of collective rights. Since the ‘first generation’ of political and civil rights were emphasized in the 1948 UDHR, a ‘second generation’ of socioeconomic and cultural rights, a ‘third generation’ of solidarity and development rights to peace, a more equitable socioeconomic order, and a sustainable environment, and a ‘fourth generation’ of indigenous rights have been added to the international legal framework of human rights (Messer, 1993). Along with states like Afghanistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Central African Republic and Zimbabwe, the DPRK rejects the internationally accepted norms of human rights as enshrined by the UN. The official version of the DPRK’s human rights strongly represents collective9 rights (Weathereley and Song, 2008; Song, 2011; Collins, 2018), as acutely stated by Collins (2018, p 2): ‘North Korea’s stated view of human rights observance is through the prism of the collective.’ While ordinary citizens are deprived the opportunity of understanding the notion of human rights, or even their existence, through the absence of formal education (Robinson, 2019), scholars have outlined the central characteristics of the DPRK’s official mode of human rights, namely ‘our style’ of human rights established by Kim Jong Il (Song, 2011). According to Song (2011, p 150), the four principal tenets of ‘our style’ human rights are: ‘(i) the right to national survival, (ii) dictatorship as the protection of human rights, (iii) granted by the fatherly leader, and finally (iv) the use of duty-​based language of human rights.’ As embodied in these creeds, North Korean human rights do not support individual rights 18

Introduction

to freedom and liberty and instead, at least in theory, place strong emphasis on ‘the rights of the collective’ (Weathereley and Song, 2008, p 282). According to its de jure policy, the DPRK has been a UN member state since 1991, and so has implicitly accepted the observance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Charter and accession to international human rights treaties, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (Yang, 2018). However, its de facto policy essentially ignores de jure human rights legislation in practice by enforcing loyalty to the Supreme Leader and protecting the Kim regime from enemies within (Clemens Jr, 2016), all at the cost of human rights (Fahy, 2019). On the other hand, Smith (2014) argues that there is a tendency among researchers to exaggerate the DPRK’s human rights issues, primarily driven by international concerns about the security threat caused by the country. Smith cites the Food and Agricultural Organization, World Food Programme and UNICEF report (2012), which suggested that food insecurity in North Korea was not entirely the fault of the country’s government. According to Smith (2014), the report stated that food insecurity in North Korea had multiple causes, including damage to agricultural production by climatic events, an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in cattle, and the reduced capacity for commercial imports. In harmony with this, there is some evidence to suggest a decline in maternal and children’s mortality rates and an improvement in nutritional levels in recent years. For instance, the DPRK’s VNR report indicates that mortality rates for children under the age of five and mothers per 10,000 newborn babies decreased between 2015 and 2019, along with an enhancement in the nutrition of children under five between 2012 and 2020 (  Joung, 2021). In addition, NGOs that document human rights abuses in the DPRK have witnessed some changes since 2004. These include the amendment of the North Korean Criminal Code to impose less severe punishments for border-​ crossers, and fewer forced abortions and infanticides in detention centres for repatriated defectors, as a response to pressure from the international community (Hosaniak, 2019). In agreement with this, Quintana (2022) notes that the DPRK government has shown proactive engagement with the international community and UN procedures on some parts of the human rights agenda. Examples include the government’s participation in the reviews by the Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women and the Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2017; and its agreement to implement 132 recommendations of the third cycle of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in May 2019, ‘including on progress in the realization of economic, social and cultural rights; addressing discrimination; pursuing gender equality; and human 19

North Korean Women and Defection

rights awareness-​raising activities among citizens and officials’ (Quintana, 2022, p 11). However, despite these indications of marginal improvements, some of the abovementioned laws have been reversed in recent years, and the human rights situation has worsened since the inception of Kim Jong Un in 2011 (Hosaniak, 2019). In addition, concerns regarding other human rights issues abound. For example, a lack of medical resources and poor maintenance of hospital facilities have led to inadequate healthcare services for people, in conjunction with shortages of even basic medicines, such as antibiotics (Collins, 2018). The detention and imprisonment of individuals with no legal protection remains a serious concern as there are no minimum standards of treatment for detainees. As a result, they are subject to long hours of physical labour with sub-​standard nourishment and unhygienic conditions, causing high rates of disease and death (UNHRC, 2014; Baek, 2016; Garcia, 2019). Worse still, there is an indication of increased incarceration of women repatriated from China since the amendment of the Criminal Code in 2009. Women now receive sentences in long-​term detention centres, unlike prior to the reinforcement of the law when women were mostly sent to short-​term detention centres, casting doubt on the seemingly more lenient approaches taken by the regime, mentioned previously (Hosaniak, 2013). In parallel with this, deeply entrenched cultural aspects of gendered violence have not been addressed, as encapsulated in the atrocious treatment of repatriated women in detention centres through the practice of forced abortion and infanticide (KINU, 2016). Moreover, the UN Special Rapporteur report (Quintana, 2022) highlights the chronic food insecurity in the DPRK, with poor domestic food production. It further suggests that draconian COVID-​19 restrictions have had a further negative impact on people’s ability to access basic food supplies. Public health has also been affected, including the exhaustion of sexual and reproductive health supplies provided by the United Nations Population Fund by July 2021, as well as under-​investment in infrastructure, medical equipment and personnel. Furthermore, the report highlights a significant reduction in the number of defectors arriving in South Korea due to the protracted imposition of stricter border controls in the DPRK since the COVID-​19 outbreak, as exemplified by 63 refugees in 2021, compared with 229 in 2020 and 1,047 in 2019 (Quintana, 2022). It is against this backdrop that women defectors’ activism becomes palpably imperative.

North Korean women’s human rights activism Meanings of activism and human rights activists Scholars have defined activism in numerous ways. Niblett (2017, p 1) suggests that ‘activism is about bringing to life ideas regarding power, fairness, 20

Introduction

democracy, and hope’. Permanent Culture Now (n.d.) defines activism as ‘quite simply taking action to effect social change’. Similarly, Leigh et al (2021, p 174) delineate activism as ‘a process by which actions and commitments are made to transform systems for social change’. Thus, the common thread that characterizes all forms of activism is ‘to challenge the status quo’ (Ryan, 2016, p 89) and/​or to change existing arrangements and distributions of ‘status, power, and resources’ (Pérez, 2009, p 1). Passy and Monsch (2020, p 14) provide a more detailed definition of activism, which refers to ‘the sustained intervention of a group of individuals with the aim of achieving social, cultural, or political change’. In this regard, a particular goal plays a crucial role. Couch (2004, p 15) takes a broader perspective on activism: A role assumed by individuals or collective actors either to resist what they consider to be a political wrong or to bring about political change, through contained or transgressive tactics, excluding political violence. An activist may therefore be a member of a social movement, popular struggle, trade union, collective, network, NGO, or civic or religious organisation, a scholar or student, or an individual unaffiliated with any group. Consonant with this, activism can take varied forms, ranging from visible and explicit actions to more implicit and subtle influences (Ryan, 2016; Leigh et al, 2021). In association with these definitions of activism, human rights activists are engaged, justice-​oriented individuals ‘who advocate for the protection of their own rights, as well as the rights of others’ by taking an active role in tackling social injustice by questioning and challenging the existing social structures and political systems that have led to a disregard for people’s fundamental rights (Hall, 2019, p 27). Keck and Sikkink (1998) –​in their examination of transnational advocacy organizations working on human rights, the environment and women’s rights –​observed interactions between activists and various local, national and international organizations, structured by networks. By creating new links, activists increase their channels of access to global bodies. A distinctive feature of these networks is ‘the centrality of principled ideas or values in motivating their formation’ (Keck and Sikkink, 1998, p 1). Additionally, Keck and Sikkink (1998, pp 40–​41) make a pivotal point about historical campaigns for women’s rights and opposing slavery –​ that when they began, their ideas seemed almost impossible to achieve. However, activists involved in these movements made possible ‘the previously unimaginable, by framing problems in such a way that their solution comes to appear inevitable’. One of the most important tactics used to achieve this was ‘promoting change by reporting facts’, combined with ‘personal testimony to give those facts human meaning and to motivate action’ (Keck 21

North Korean Women and Defection

and Sikkink, 1998, p 45). According to these authors, the principles of human rights can critique traditional ideas of sovereignty, challenge human rights practices by a state and transform a state’s sovereign authority over its citizens in order to protect their fundamental rights against state abuse. While people tend to associate activists largely with the imagery of those who march through the streets carrying signs, and chanting political slogans and messages, there are also others who work behind the scenes and who may not necessarily consider themselves activists (McLaughlin, n.d.). This latter reflects the experiences of North Korean women human rights activists. The women I have interviewed play a range of roles and the degree/​extent of their involvement varies from a leader who is committed to full-​time activism to those who occasionally participate in protests or provide testimonies of their experiences or interviews for the media and researchers. According to Ms A, who is the leading activist for DPRK women’s human rights, the mere fact of North Korean defectors living their lives to the full is itself human rights activism: ‘In Britain especially there is a North Korean embassy. The embassy monitors all the lives of defectors. But if they witness the images of defectors living successfully and strongly, that itself is challenging the North Korean regime. So even if people don’t do activism using words, living well itself is also important.’ Thus, North Korean human rights activism extends to the micropolitics of challenges enacted through everyday practices (Burns, 1961; Willner, 2011). Influenced by postmodern perspectives that question power operating as a single monolithic state or class inflicting itself on the masses, micropolitics considers power as being exerted through the mundane, little ‘networks’ of everyday life (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; Thiele, 2010). Through the politicization of all areas of social and personal existence, every sphere of social life becomes problematic and a site of struggle, as stated by Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p 213): ‘In short, everything is political, but every politics is simultaneously a macropolitics and a micropolitics.’ In this sense, human rights activism is not limited to the macro-​and meso-​politics of group protests, marching and lobbying, but also extends to the everydayness through which defectors demonstrate their resilience, happiness and wellbeing outside the territory of North Korea. This challenge to the desire of the regime for women defectors to suffer and struggle in their lives outside the DPRK becomes an act of resistance in itself.

North Korean defector activism and reactions from the Kim Jong Un regime As pointed out by Chubb and Yeo (2019), the dominant scholarly models of transnational activism are founded on a number of prevalent assumptions, 22

Introduction

which include: opposition movements operating inside the country; the necessity of local actors for lasting human rights change; and changes taking place from the top down. However, these premises do not tally with the case of DPRK human rights activism. According to Chubb and Yeo, there are neither domestic actors nor top-​down movements within the DPRK. These researchers argue that the transnational activism of North Korean defectors outside the DPRK has demonstrated their mobilizing capacity by achieving significant outcomes in both domestic and international legislation: for example, stipulation of the Law on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Women in 2010, in response to international pressure (Yang, 2018); and the passing of a law by the US in 2004 to promote human rights and freedom in North Korea (Human Rights Watch, 2016). There are competing interpretations of how to bring human rights change to the DPRK, and North Korean defector human rights activists depend on NGOs and the UN for their survival (Chubb and Yeo, 2019). Driven largely by human rights activist organizations in South Korea and the US, this dependence does not entirely represent the experiences of defector activists in the UK, particularly women activists, as I explain in this book. Although collaboration and networking with such organizations is crucial, retaining financial independence from them provides leeway for women activists to retain some distance from shifts in politics or changes within these organizations. Despite its fractured characteristics, with its competing approaches and interpretations, defectors’ human rights activism, in particular that based in the ROK, has exasperated the Kim Jong Un regime, as well as South Korea’s previous President Moon Jae-​In’s government, as suggested by numerous US news articles (Berlinger et al, 2020; J-​H. Cho, 2020; Choe, 2020). Berlinger et al (2020), citing the North Korean state media report, write that the DPRK government blew up the four-​story liaison office building in the town of Kaesong, located near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) office, as retaliation for a group of defectors who used balloons to send anti-​North Korean propaganda north of the DMZ. These balloons contained leaflets, or were loaded with Bibles, dollar bills, small radio sets or memory sticks containing content that the North considers subversive, such as South Korean soap operas (Choe, 2020). The Northern regime claimed that such acts are in violation of the deal struck between Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-​In in 2018 at their first summit, when they agreed to cease ‘all hostile acts and eliminating their means, including broadcasting through loudspeakers and distribution of leaflets’ along their shared border (Berlinger et al, 2020). In a similar vein, the Kim regime called the propaganda sent by defector activists a ‘provocation graver than gun and artillery fire’ (Choe, 2020). As a retaliatory measure against the Southern government, it cut off lines of communication with South 23

North Korean Women and Defection

Korea (J-​H. Cho, 2020). In an attempt to restart peaceful negotiations with the North, the South Korean Parliament passed legislation in December 2020 banning activists from sending balloons to North Korea, despite heavy criticism from those who opposed such a law (BBC News, 2020; The Guardian, 2020). These responses are indicative of the impact that defector activism has on the North Korean government and the potential threat it poses of destabilizing the regime. Although this activism does not appear to be having an impact on the North Korean human rights agenda, it clearly has potential as a driver for change –​which also applies to women’s activism. The defectors’ continuous fight against the appalling treatment of North Korean women by both the regime and China will have salient implications for women’s rights. While everyday borders and bordering operate to control and restrict women’s movements, they also provide fluid transgressive space for some. As Raunig (2007, p 252) suggests: ‘the border is no longer intended to keep two sides apart, but rather to enable the permanent constitution and confrontation of different with different as a space and condition of possibility for the revolutionary machine.’ This fluidity and multiplicity of the border enables some North Korean women to take part in activism to challenge both the DPRK government and international communities over their unjust treatment of North Korean women refugees. This is especially significant in a context where internal grassroots defiance networks are absent (Chubb and Yeo, 2019; Hosaniak, 2019).

Structure of the book After situating North Korean women’s human rights activism within the global context, Chapter 2 examines methodological considerations relating to researching North Korean defectors, focusing on ethical issues and the challenges of studying North Korean women defectors and their human rights issues. The chapter begins with a discussion of phenomenology, particularly Martin Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology. This is followed by a discussion of its relationship with the life history method, while exploring the power of storytelling. I then discuss issues around access and recruitment of participants during different phases of the research. Gaining access to North Korean defectors is generally difficult because the majority of them want to keep a low profile due to the risk of potential repercussions they and their families face from the regime. Also, due to the sensitive nature of the topic, it is extremely challenging to find willing participants. These factors raise several ethical concerns, while also requiring a sensitive approach to minimize any potential harm or risks to the participants, their families or the researcher. In addition, the dynamics between a researcher of 24

Introduction

South Korean heritage and North Korean defectors poses methodologically important questions. As noted by some researchers, North Korean escapees who have settled in South Korea generally struggle due to prejudice and vast cultural differences, together with the language barrier, despite both countries speaking Korean. Reflecting these issues, I discuss some of the difficulties that I experienced as a researcher of South Korean heritage studying North Korean participants, applying a self-​reflective approach. Drawing on this, the chapter moves on to a discussion of the complex dynamics between insider and outsider in a critical manner. The final part of the chapter discusses the feminist approach that I have adopted in this research in order to centre the voices of the participants while reducing the distance between researcher and participant. Through this, I critically question the nature of ‘truth’ in positivist approaches and discuss the type of authenticity and validity that I am seeking in my research. Chapter 3 presents the participants’ narratives. It focuses on the rich data addressing individual experiences and the observation of grave human rights violations encountered by women inside the regime, along with those who have escaped the DPRK, especially via China. The first part focuses on narratives addressing human rights issues faced in North Korea, such as domestic violence and sexual harassment. The second part presents narratives of female escapees’ experiences during their escape, primarily focusing on human trafficking and forced/​voluntary marriages to Chinese men. This chapter further presents the central role of women since the economic crisis of the 1990s and the rise of their dual burden as they struggled to feed their families. In the analysis of these narratives, theories around gender and patriarchy are applied, in order to examine their accounts critically. For instance, some scholars –​such as Sanchez (2016, 2018) and Zhang et al (2018) –​have criticized existing perspectives that view women who are human trafficked as powerless victims, and have proposed the importance of their agency in navigating extremely oppressive global border regimes. The experiences of North Korean women reflect these contested views: they are both victims and free agents who use their bodies to protect their families. However, I argue that the patriarchal structures deeply embedded in their lives have ‘compelled’ these women to make such choices, even where they claim voluntary decisions. Chapter 4 presents narratives of activists depicting the pathways through which they became involved in human rights activism. Activists’ narratives suggest that their harrowing experiences during their escape and lives in China initially made them feel ashamed, especially as women, and therefore they had kept silent about their stories. However, there had then been a transitional phase from victimhood to becoming vocal activists. Additionally, their narratives suggest a strong sense of responsibility, guilt and altruism, as well as concern for other people who are in similar situations, which operated 25

North Korean Women and Defection

as motivators for their activism. In conjunction with this, their dream of a better future for fellow North Korean women (and children and men) has become the driving force behind their activism. This chapter also explores the challenges these women face in their activism, such as some of the criticisms they have received from other North Korean defectors and their fear of potential harm to their families left behind, as well as to themselves. Drawing on these stories, I argue that Altruistic Political Imagination (API) is essential for overcoming such challenges: that is to say, activists’ beliefs in the possibility of achieving improvements in the lives of North Korean women (and children and men). This chapter also explores the tactics and strategies deployed by the lead activist, and her collaboration with both national and international organizations. Chapter 5 explores the theoretical concept of API, which captures North Korean women’s human rights activism more aptly than existing concepts around imagination and altruism. It begins with an examination of imagination. An imagined vision of a better future plays a vital role in activism and social movements. Hence, the section begins with an in-​ depth examination of the role of imagination in human life, engaging with philosophical, psychological and sociological perspectives. Alongside this, social relations and altruism form an inseparable part of this activism. Thus, the following section discusses altruism in depth, exploring its various meanings and contentious issues, and engaging with a wide range of scholarly works. While I acknowledge the relevance and usefulness of the concepts around altruism, especially those proposed by Passy (2001), I argue for the need to develop a concept in which imaginary and inter-​relational aspects are more explicitly articulated in order to explain North Korean activists’ motivation towards their activism. I also propose that API potentially has a wider application to the analyses of other movements and forms of activism. Chapter 6 provides a recapitulated overview of the book, drawing on all the chapters. It re-​emphasizes the significance of activism in improving the lives of North Korean women. It also reinforces the salient contribution of API in unpacking human rights activism. Additionally, it examines what has been achieved so far through the participants’ activism, as well as other international endeavours to improve the situations of North Korean women. This chapter further discusses some limitations of the study and makes recommendations for future research, as well as suggestions for further actions to address North Korean women’s rights issues globally. Notes 1

Throughout the book, I use the terms North Korean defectors, border-​crossers, escapees, and refugees interchangeably. While these terms each have their own unique meanings, some common features connect them, and they can all be applied to North Korean migrants due to the extreme political and economic situation of the DPRK. Merriam-​ Webster online defines ‘defection’ as ‘conscious abandonment of allegiance or duty (as to 26

Introduction

2

3

4

5

6

a person, cause, or doctrine).’ Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries online define ‘defector’ as ‘a person who leaves a political party, country, etc. to join another that is considered to be an enemy’. As suggested in these definitions, the term defector has political connotations. In a strict sense, the majority of North Koreans who have left the country since the 1990s have done so due to hunger and hardship, and not for political reasons. However, the highly repressive characteristics of the country, which criminalize any unauthorized emigrants, implicitly brand them with the status of defector. Such despotic conditions have also forced many ordinary North Koreans to ‘flee’ or ‘escape’ the regime due to their fear of persecution because of their ‘illegal’ border-​crossings to China or suspicious involvement with Christianity. Hence, there are sufficiently legitimate grounds for them to be regarded as refugees, as well as the principle of refugees sur place. In addition, drawing on my activist interviews, I would suggest that defection implies an act of resistance; even though most people have not left the country with the intention of defiance, the very act itself implies a challenge to the government by directly breaking the law it has established. On this basis, I propose that it is appropriate to use these terms interchangeably to describe North Korean migrants. The official autarkic state ideology of the DPRK, established in 1972 by Kim Il Sung, whose common meaning is ‘self-​reliance’, although the actual meaning is more nuanced (Lee, 2003). According to Lee (2003, p 105), Juche ideology embodies three facets: ‘political and ideological independence, especially from the Soviet Union and China; economic self-​reliance and self-​sufficiency; and a viable national defense system’. The donju, meaning masters of money, refers to a new wealthy class and/​or entrepreneurs in North Korea who have evolved from grassroots entrepreneurial activities (Habib, 2015) and have gained an upward social mobility through using their business acumen and foreign connections (Corrado, 2021; KBS World, 2021). Using financial resources, the donju have expanded their economic activities into markets, including for consumer goods, transport, distribution and money lending, in addition to playing a bigger role in real-​estate development since the 2010s (Habib, 2015; Koen and Beom, 2020). According to KBS World (2021), they are influential economic actors, known to run the DPRK’s economy, who enjoy luxurious lifestyles, such as going to bars and restaurants, as well as buying foreign electronics and luxury goods, substantially different from the lives of the majority of ordinary North Koreans. Although it is difficult to assess the precise amount, in 2018 South Korea’s intelligence service estimated that US$12 billion in cash was held by the donju (Corrado, 2021). According to Kim (2011), ‘The Royal Court Economy’ was created by Kim Jong Il in recompense for the collapse of the mainstream ‘People’s Economy’. It is an essentially clandestine, invisible and firewalled financial scheme that raises hard foreign currencies that are directly channelled to the Kim family and the party leadership (Mikheev, 1993; Kim, 2011). ‘Voluntary National Review’ is a system by which each member state voluntarily evaluates and discloses its implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), established by the UN General Assembly in 2015. The State Planning Commission of the DPRK compiled VNR and reported to the UN General Assembly in July 2021 (Joung, 2021). Socio-​political profiling of the entire population. The term ‘ “songbun” means “ingredients” or material (as in substance or makeup)’, which is used by the DPRK to designate one’s socio-​political background (Collins, 2012, p 6). According to Collins, there are two types of songbun: ‘chulsin songbun’ or songbun based on the socio-​economic origins of one’s family; and ‘sahoe songbun’ or societal songbun, which refers to one’s individual socio-​political and economic behaviour and performance. Under this classification, every North Korean citizen is allocated to one of three classes: the ‘core’ or loyal class, the ‘wavering’ class, or the ‘hostile’ class. The status of core (haeksim) class is assigned to those considered loyal to the 27

North Korean Women and Defection

7

8

9

Kim regime, including those who fought alongside Kim Il Sung, socialist intellectuals and revolutionaries, and those who fought for the DPRK during the Korean War. This group enjoys the most privilege in every aspect of life. The wavering (dongyo) class consists of those whose loyalty to the party is in doubt, yet who are considered to have the possibility of serving the regime through their economic and political performance, especially if they demonstrate loyalty to the party. The hostile class (choktae) is reserved for those who are regarded as disloyal to the party and anti-​socialist revolutionary, such as landowners and capitalists, those who have relatives in and/​or strong connections with South Korea, and collaborators with the old Japanese colonial regime (Collins, 2012; Tudor and Pearson, 2015). The individual has no power over this classification, yet every aspect of their life is determined by it, including housing, education, occupational assignment, healthcare, and food distribution policies. It is therefore a ‘caste system’ designed to control the entire population and the major foundation for discrimination and human rights abuses (Collins, 2012, p 1). Yeonjwaje means ‘guilt by association’ and links the crime of an individual to their family members (Collins and Oh, 2017). This affects three generations, and the rule stems from the traditional Korean monarchical past (Tudor and Pearson, 2015). According to Kwon (2020, p 97), this institution of collective culpability –​also used in South Korea during and after the Korean War –​is not a mere remnant of the past but ‘a highly effective instrument of social control’ deployed in post-​war Korea. Lankov (2004) explains that, on facing deportation, North Korean women are allowed to choose whether to take their children with them or leave them in China. Given the dire situation in DPRK prisons, most women prefer to leave their children in China. The narrative of my participant, Ms A, suggests a similar story. Ms A decided to leave her young son in China, as discussed in Chapter 4; despite the grim situation in her Chinese family, leaving him with them was considered to be better than taking him to North Korea. Yang (2018) highlights the pervasiveness of collectivism in the DPRK, embodied in the metaphor of North Korean society as a ‘large family’, comprising the Supreme Leader as the father, the Party as the mother, and its citizens as children. Through the reinforcement of this imagery, the absolute authority and power of the Supreme Leader are consolidated. The following poem taken from a North Korean novel cited by Kang (2011, p 76) illuminates the interpenetration of this familial metaphor into DPRK society: Our father is Marshal Kim Il Sung. Our home is in the bosom of the Party. We are all siblings. We have nothing to envy in the world.

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Introduction

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Sanchez, G. (2016) ‘Women’s participation in the facilitation of human smuggling: the case of the US Southwest’, Geopolitics, 21(2): 387–​406. Sanchez, G. (2018) ‘Five misconceptions about migrant smuggling’, Migration Policy Centre, Issue 2018/​07. Sassen, S. (2014) Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Schwekendiek, D. and Mercier, N. (2016) ‘A contemporary history of North Korea: the socioeconomic rise of women in the post-​cold war era as witnessed in different regions’, Asian Women, 32(4): 97–​121. Seol, D-​H. and Skrentny, J.D. (2009) ‘Why is there so little migrant settlement in East Asia?’, International Migration Review, 43(3): 578–​620. Sheller, M. (2018) Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes, London: Verso. Shulong, C. (2015) ‘China’s perception and policy about North Korea’, American Foreign Policy Interests, 37: 273–​8. Smets, K, Mazzocchetti, J., Gerstmans, L. and Mostmans, L. (2019) ‘Beyond victimhood: reflecting on migrant-​victim representations with Afghan, Iraqi, and Syrian asylum seekers and refugees in Belgium’, in L. d’Haenens, W. Joris and F. Heinderyckx (eds) Images of Immigrants and Refugees in Western Europe: Media Representations, Public Opinion and Refugees’ Experiences, Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, pp 177–​97. Smith, H. (2014) ‘Crimes against humanity?’, Critical Asian Studies, 46:1: 127–​143. DOI: 10.1080/​14672715.2014.863581 Song, J. (2011) Human Rights Discourse in North Korea: Post-​colonial, Marxist and Confucian Perspectives, London: Routledge. Song, J. (2017) ‘Co-​evolution of networks and discourses: a case from North Korean defector-​activists’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 71(3): 284–​99. Sung, K. and Cho, S. (2018) ‘Why are North Korean women more likely to defect than North Korean men?’, Asian Women, 34(3): 97–​118. https://​ doi.org/​10.14431/​aw.2018.09.34.3.97 Thiele, K. (2010) ‘To believe in this world, as it is’: immanence and the quest for political activism, Deleuze Studies, 4: 28–​45. Tudor, D. and Pearson, J. (2015) North Korean Confidential, North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle Publishing. United Nations (1948) ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’. Available from: www.ohchr.org/​EN/​UDHR/​Docume​nts/​UDHR_​T​rans​lati​ons/​ eng.pdf [Accessed 20 February 2019]. United Nations (1987) Human Rights: Questions and Answers, New York: UN. United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-​HABITAT) (2013) ‘State of women in cities 2012-​2013: gender and the prosperity of cities’. Available from: www.unhabi​tat.org/​sites/​defa​ult/​files/​downl​oad-​mana​ger-​files/​Gen​ der%20and%20Pro​sper​ity%20of%20Cit​ies.pdf [Accessed 20 February 2023]. 37

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UNHCR (n.d.) ‘Glossary’. Available from: www.unhcr.org/​449267​670. pdf [Accessed 15 June 2022]. UNHCR (2001–​2022) ‘Convention and protocol relating to the status of refugees’. Available from: https://​www.unhcr.org/​uk/​3b6​6c2a​a10 [Accessed 13 June 2022]. UNHCR (2016) ‘UNHCR viewpoint: ‘refugee’ or ‘migrant’ –​which is right?’. Available from: https://​www.unhcr.org/​news/​lat​est/​2016/​7/​55df0e​ 556/​unhcr-​viewpo​int-​refu​gee-​migr​ant-​right.html [Accessed 20 April 2022]. UNHCR (2021a) ‘Fact Sheet: Japan’. Available from: https://​report​ing. unhcr.org/​sites/d​ efau ​ lt/fi ​ les/J​ APAN%20Fa​ ct%20Sh​eet-​June%202​021.pdf [Accessed 9 October 2022]. UNHCR (2021b) ‘Fact Sheet: Republic of Korea’. Available from: https://​ report​ i ng.unhcr.org/ ​ s ites/ ​ d efa ​ u lt/ ​ f iles/ ​ U NHCR%20R ​ e pub​ l ic%20 of%20Ko​rea%20f​act%20sh​eet%20F​ebru​ary%202​021.pdf [Accessed 9 October 2022]. UNHCR (2021–​22) ‘Refugee data finder’. Available from: https://​www. unhcr.org/​refu​gee-​sta​tist​ics/​ [Accessed 11 June 2022]. UNHCR (2022a) ‘Commission of Inquiry on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’. Available from: www.ohchr.org/​ en/h ​ r-b​ odi​ es/h ​ rc/​co-​idprk/​com​miss​ion-​inquiry​ on-h ​ -r​ in-d​ prk [Accessed 1 July 2022]. UNHCR (2022b) ‘Global trends: forced displacement 2021’, Available from: www.unhcr.org/​uk/​publi​cati​ons/​brochu​res/​62a9d1​494/​glo​bal-​tre​ nds-​rep​ort-​2021.html [Accessed 8 October 2022]. UNHRC (2014) ‘Report of the commission of inquiry on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’. Available from: www.docume​ nts-​dds-​ny.un.org/​doc/​UNDOC/​GEN/​G14/​108/​71/​PDF/​G1410​871. pdf?Open​Elem​ent [Accessed 27 August 2018]. Walsh, J., Khoo, E. and Nygren, K. (2022) ‘“Everyday bordering” in England, Sweden and Bulgaria: social work decision-​making processes when working with migrant family members’, Journal of International Migration and Integration, 23: 343–​61. Weathereley, R. and Song, J. (2008) ‘The evolution of human rights thinking in North Korea’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transitional Politics, 24(2): 272–​96. Willner, R. (2011) ‘Micro-​politics: an underestimated field of qualitative research in political science’, German Policy Studies, 7(3): 155–​81. World Food Programme (WFP) (2019) ‘World Food Programme DPR Korea 2019-​2021: Addressing humanitarian needs and undernutrition, reducing disaster risk and responding to crises’, WFP, [online] February. Available from: https://r​ eliefw ​ eb.int/r​ epo ​ rt/d​ em​ocra​tic-​peop​les-​repub​lic-​ korea/w ​ orld-f​ ood-​progra​mme-​dpr-​korea-​2019-​2021-​add​ress​ing [Accessed 9 April 2023]. 38

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World Food Programme (WFP) (2021) ‘WFP DPR Korea country brief ’, WFP, [online] December. Available from: https://​docs.wfp.org/​api/​docume​ nts/W ​ FP-0​ 000​ 135​453/​downl​oad/​#:~:text=​WFP%20DPR%20Ko​rea%20 Coun​try%20Br​ief%20D​ecem​ber%202​021%20%E2%80%A2%20The%20 UN,%2D%20es​ sent​ ial%20p​ ayme​ n ts%20in%2Dcoun​try. [Accessed 9 April 2023]. Wright, M.W. (2011) ‘Necropolitics, narcopolitics, and femicide: gendered violence on the Mexico–​U.S. border’, Signs, 36(3): 707–​31. https://​doi. org/​10.1086/​657​496 Yang, J. (2018) ‘Women’s rights in the DPRK: discrepancies between international and domestic legal instruments in promoting women’s rights and the reality reflected by North Korean defectors’, Cornell International Law Journal, 51: 219–​43. https://​ww3.lawsch​ool.corn​ell.edu/​resea​rch/​ ILJ/​upl​oad/​Yang-​final.pdf Yeo, A. (2021) State, Society, and Markets in North Korea, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yeo, A. and Chubb, D. (eds) (2019) North Korean Human Rights: Activists and Networks, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yoon, L. (2021) ‘North Korea’s leader warns of famine: Kim Jong Un may be tightening already firm grip on power’, Human Rights Watch, [online] 12 April. Available fromwww.hrw.org/n ​ ews/2​ 021/0​ 4/1​ 2/n ​ orth-k​ ore​ as-l​ ea​ der-​warns-​fam​ine [Accessed 1 July 2021]. Yuval-​D avis, N., Wemyss, G. and Cassidy, K. (2019) Bordering, Cambridge: Polity Press. Zhang, S., Sanchez, G. and Achilli, L. (2018) ‘Crimes of solidarity in mobility: alternative views on migrant smuggling’, Annals AAPSS, 676(March): 6–​15.

39

2

Researching North Korean Women’s Human Rights: Methodological Considerations Introduction Researching North Korean refugees raises numerous methodological questions due to their acute vulnerabilities and the extreme conditions they face. Fundamentally, it challenges the ontological and epistemological approaches of positivism. The contestation over what is considered to be ‘truthful’ and ‘valid’ data in association with North Korean defectors’ stories is an indication of such a condition. In light of these concerns, in this chapter I discuss methodological considerations in depth, focusing in particular on the challenges of studying North Korean women defectors and their human rights issues. I start with a discussion on phenomenology, which is a foundational philosophical underpinning of my research, especially hermeneutic (or interpretive) phenomenology. Next, the discussion progresses into life history in connection with phenomenology. After establishing the philosophical foundations and method, I examine access to and recruitment of the participants during different phases of the research. In the ensuing section, I present the feminist approach that I take to this research in order to centre the voices of the participants, while reducing the distance between researcher and participant. Additionally, I discuss some of the challenges that I experienced as a researcher of South Korean heritage researching North Korean women defectors, applying critical reflection. This is followed by an exploration of the social construction of truth and validity in the final part of the chapter.

Phenomenological understanding This study takes a phenomenological approach to exploring the life stories of North Korean women defectors; in particular, I apply hermeneutic 40

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phenomenology, as originating in the work of Martin Heidegger (2005 [1994], 2019 [1962]). Phenomenology is a research method that aims to understand the subjective perceptions and experiences of the individual by exploring a phenomenon from their own perspectives (Knaack, 1984; Welman and Kruger, 1999; Groenewald, 2004; Neubauer et al, 2019). Thus, it is efficacious when challenging normative suppositions, which are largely created by dominant social groups (Watson, 1976). Edmund Husserl founded phenomenology as a critical social scientific research method, which disputed positivism. His transcendental phenomenology was established ‘not as a science of facts, but as a science of essential Being (as “eidetic” Science): a science which aims exclusively at establishing “knowledge of essences” ’ (Husserl, 2012 [1931], p 3). In examining a phenomenon, Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology (2012 [1931]) uses the process of bracketing –​what he called epoche –​by suspending the researcher’s own assumptions and biases to focus on the research subject’s experience of the phenomenon and thus identify the essences of the phenomenon. According to Husserl (2012 [1931], p 59), the phenomenological epoche completely prevents the researcher from ‘using any judgment that concerns spatio-​temporal existence (Dasein)’. In contrast to Husserlian phenomenology, Heidegger’s hermeneutic (interpretive) phenomenology recognizes the importance of a pre-​existing understanding of the social world, which is seen as an essential part of the human experience. Unlike Husserl’s conception, which situates ‘the individual’s relationship with oneself ’ as a starting point, prior to one’s relationship with others, Heidegger begins with ‘our relationship with others and then sets out to investigate our relationship with our selves’ (Thompson, 2005, p 8). For Heidegger, human existence is not confined to the inside of the subjective sphere, but is embedded in the world (Polt, 1999). Thus, the individual’s social, cultural, historical, economic and political milieu constitute important backdrops that shape their lives. In this respect, the process of interpretation should be undertaken in relation to a broader social context, because a phenomenon takes its true meaning in relation to the whole of which it forms a part (Watson, 1976). Within the hermeneutic phenomenological approach, the researcher and the research participant cannot detach themselves from their lifeworlds (Knaack, 1984; Sadala and Adorno, 2001; Dimond, 2016). From this perspective, no human beings are seen as free from subjective perceptions constructed due to their life experience as social beings. Hence, ‘the idea of having no prejudice is itself the greatest prejudice’ (Heidegger, 2005, p 2). Consonant with this, Giorgi (1975, cited by Knaack, 1984, p 75) suggests that an individual’s perceptions and actions are a ‘meaningful expression of being-​in-​the-​world’. Suspending, or bracketing off, the researcher’s subjective viewpoints, as suggested by Husserl, would therefore deprive 41

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us of a vital component when fathoming the lived phenomenon of the participants in a richer and fuller fashion (Watson, 1976). In this sense, ‘doing phenomenology’ means the researcher capturing ‘rich descriptions of phenomena and their settings’ (Groenewald, 2004, p 104). The art of social sciences therefore lies in the researcher’s ability to use phenomenology to question existing social issues or established knowledge (Dalberg and Dalberg, 2020).

Intersubjectivity in phenomenology Hence, intersubjectivity is vital in phenomenology. Social knowledge does not arise in isolation but from inter-​experiential processes between people (Mascolo and Kallio, 2020). Schutz (1967 [1932]) emphasizes the importance of lived experiences when talking about intersubjective understanding of a human act and the meaning of that act as a social phenomenon. From the perspective of Schutz (1967 [1932], p 111), the attention of the observer should be focused on ‘what lies behind them’ [my emphasis]. Thus, genuine phenomenological understanding should stem from things beyond facile appearance. This requires critical reflective processes since acts and behaviour do not have inherent meaning until a meaning is given through reflection. According to Jackson (2019, p 16), ‘storytelling is a quintessentially intersubjective activity that brings the social into being’. Narrative accounts are not created in a vacuum but within a specific context for a specific audience or audiences (Maynes et al, 2008). Mishler (1986, p 82), treating narratives as a co-​creation between the researcher and the participant, notes the important role the interviewer plays in the construction of the interviewee’s account –​‘how she or he listens, attends, encourages, interrupts, digresses, initiates topics, and terminates responses’. Regarding my interviews with North Korean women, the type of questions that I asked and the way I listened intently were designed to encourage their comments; these factors were crucial in the co-​creation of the research data. In hermeneutic phenomenology, the vital role of the researcher extends to an interpretive process of analysing the data through critical reflection (Bynum and Varpio, 2018, p 253): Researchers capture their reflections in writing and then reflect and write again, creating continuous, iterative cycles to develop increasingly robust and nuanced analyses. Throughout the analysis, researchers must maintain a strong orientation to the phenomenon under study (i.e. avoid distractions) and attend to the interactions between the parts and the whole. This last step, also described as the hermeneutic circle, emphasises the practice of deliberately considering how the data (the 42

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parts) contribute to the evolving understanding of the phenomena (the whole) and how each enhances the meaning of the other. In addition, researchers’ past experiences and extant knowledge should be embedded in their interpretive process, in conjunction with critically and openly reflecting upon their biases and subjectivity in relation to the phenomenon during their data collection and analysis (Bynum and Varpio, 2018).

Phenomenology and the life history The biography of an individual constructed through storytelling bears the historical, temporal-​spatial and personal characteristics of social phenomena (Giorgi, 1975). Thus, Lincoln and Lanford (2019) highlight the urgent need to study marginalized subjects, especially those whose lives have been affected through having been forced to leave their own countries due to economic, social, cultural and political changes, and how these factors have impacted upon migrants’ and refugees’ life stories. In this regard, a biographical approach can be one of the most apt research methods for examining a particular social phenomenon as perceived and lived by the individual. The life history is part of a wide range of biographical methods; it refers to a research method that is designed to record an individual’s biography in their own words (Jackson and Russell, 2010). In a similar vein, Ssali et al (2015) delineate it as ‘a qualitative method of data collection where people are asked to document their life over a period of time. It is a personal account of their life, in their own words and using their own personal timelines.’ Hence, life histories provide a means of accessing people’s narrative accounts of their lives and of the changes that have occurred within living memory (Jackson and Russell, 2010). In studying the life history, it is vital to be aware of the broader societal, historical and cultural context to achieve a fuller understanding (Watson, 1976). In a hermeneutical sense, during the process of interpretation the researcher has a dialectical relationship with the life history data they are studying by moving back and forth between their own subjective position and the data at hand (Watson, 1976; Frank, 1979). In this regard, a life history is a creative outcome between the participant’s and the researcher’s stories (Janesick, 2019). In association with this, Becker (1966, cited by Watson, 1976, p 97) emphasizes the significance of studying the ‘subjective side’ of institutional processes and how the life history helps directly in realizing this objective. This highlights multilayered and complex relationships between an individual’s perceptions/​experiences of their life and reality, which are filled with tensions and paradoxes. As noted by Watson (1976), the individual experiences chasms in their life due to structural forces 43

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that prevent them from realizing their dreams and ideals. Through time, a person gains ‘awareness of the disparity between his self-​image, his needs, his hopes, and the reality of the world which thwarts and contradicts his intentions’ (Watson, 1976, p 106), as will be illustrated by the narratives of North Korean women in the next two chapters.

The power of storytelling In dealing with the lacunae and conflict inherent in human life, storytelling can be a powerful tool that provides a sense of agency and order in disempowering and fragmented circumstances (Frank, 1979). The power of life histories also lies in their ability to illuminate the structural processes that shape individual lives and to critically study people’s experiences (Lanford et al, 2018). This is particularly pertinent to the cases of those who are largely neglected and rendered voiceless in society (Spooner, 2019). Jackson (2019, p 23) poignantly writes that ‘storytelling remains one of our most powerful techniques for healing ourselves and restoring order to a broken world’. In a similar vein, McCrea (1994, p 215) argues that the act of storytelling as a process of healing and telling one’s story offers a medium of becoming –​a possibility for constructing one’s own identity through narrative. This enables individuals, especially those who are profoundly affected by traumatic life experiences, to gain a sense of control and congruence (Kouritzin, 2000). By constructing narrative accounts of disruptions, individuals create meaning and a sense of order in their lives (Frank, 2002; Bell, 2009). Storytelling, therefore, enables people to construct a subjective sense of continuity in their biographies, as well as making connections between their present and past selves (Maynes et al, 2008). Additionally, the life history provides divergent voices and viewpoints on contemporary social phenomena, which contrast with the socially dominant ones (Spooner, 2019). As a result, it provides an opportunity to contribute to the development of social policy and to empower less powerful individuals and groups in society. It further provides the potential for action that could bring about social changes (Mishler, 1986, p 119): Through their narratives people may be moved beyond the text to the possibilities of action. That is, to be empowered is not only to speak in one’s own voice and to tell one’s own story, but to apply the understanding arrived at to action in accord with one’s own interests.

Feminist approach In accordance with the above, and with feminist research methodology that refutes the objective stance of a researcher (Oakley, 1974, 1981, 44

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2016; McCormick, 2012; Leurs and Olivieri, 2014; Greenberg et al, 2021), I sought to employ a research method that is not grounded in a hierarchical relationship between researcher and participant. At the core of feminist methodology is the ambition to challenge historically male-​ centred knowledge production and the exclusion and distortion of women’s experiences by bringing women’s stories to the forefront of research (Greenberg et al, 2021). Feminist critiques of sociology are propelled by the desire for better representation of women’s lives (Smart, 2009). Thus, the common thread that connects different strands of feminism is to make ‘visible the invisible: bringing women “out from under” ’ (Oakley, 1974, p 3). The classic works of Sandra Harding (1987a, 1987b, 1992) additionally provide useful frameworks. Harding (1987a, 1987b) proposes three characteristics of feminist research: women’s experiences and lives as theoretical and empirical resources; research addressing issues pertaining to and conducted for women; and the situating of the researcher in the same critical plane as the subject matter of her enquiry. Seen from within this critical framework, the subject positions of the inquirer, including class, race, culture and gender assumptions, should constitute a vital part of the research in terms of the inquirer’s influence on the shaping of the subject of inquiry, data collection and analysis. In this respect, the researcher does not manifest as ‘an invisible, anonymous voice of authority, but as a real, historical individual with concrete, specific desires and interests’ (Harding, 1987a, p 9). In association with these elements, standpoint theory, developed by Harding (1992), provides further guidance on feminist methodology. A central principle of standpoint theory is that the starting point of knowledge-​building is the experiences and perspectives of marginalized social groups. This ‘starting off thought’ from the lives of disadvantaged people will cast light on critical questions that do not arise in the lives of dominant groups. Viewed from this perspective, knowledge production is for disempowered people, rather than for the dominant groups. This is crucial in understanding and representing the lives of those who are at the bottom of social hierarchies, such as North Korean women, in a less distorted manner. Women’s marginalized status enables them to see the imbalance between their own lives and those of the powerful. In this respect, bringing to light the perspectives of North Korean women defectors and activists is an important step in making visible what remains unsaid and unexamined. With specific reference to the topics of the violations of North Korean women’s human rights and the motivations, challenges and strategies of their political activism that I am addressing in this book, these are salient factors, especially regarding North Korean women’s activism. Although the human rights abuse of North Korean women has been examined and discussed in white papers, in the work of NGOs, and 45

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in government research, academic discourse on this is relatively limited and their human rights activism remains virtually uninvestigated. As suggested by Leurs and Olivieri (2014), the visibility project can also explore contradictory trajectories. For instance, by examining North Korean women’s stories, one can reveal the contradictory aspects of some women’s escape to China, whether it is voluntary or forced, as discussed in Chapter 3. What this further contributes is the ability to examine in depth seemingly paradoxical experiences in order to uncover complexities extending beyond simplistic binary approaches, by paying heed to ‘the paradoxes and complexities of power relations’ (Leurs and Olivieri, 2014, p xxxi). It is critical to deconstruct and dismantle what is taken for granted and seen as ‘natural’ in North Korean women’s everyday lives, such as gender-​ based violence against women and their low social status, as examined in the next chapter. Consistent with Harding (1987a, 1987b, 1992), McCormick (2012) points out the importance of the politicization of feminist research to benefit the oppressed and contribute to the transformation of society. I argue that politicization also entails clarifying the position of the researcher in supporting the agenda of their research participants. For instance, I do not stand objectively outside the topic of my research; as an ethnically diverse and racialized woman living in the UK, I recognize and embody the lived experiences of gender inequalities in intersection with my ‘race’ and ethnicity. I have embarked upon this project with an appreciation of the urgent issues affecting North Korean women and with the aim of contributing to addressing it. In conducting this research, I am also critically aware of my comparatively privileged position, stemming from my class and the fact that I was born and raised in South Korea with better opportunities for freedom and education than my participants, despite South Korea’s deeply entrenched patriarchal structure and culture. As stressed by the Personal Narratives Group (1989), women’s narratives are significant in highlighting the power dynamics between men and women, as well as illuminating the interplay between individual and society in the construction of unequal gender relations. In association with this, the life history interview is regarded as the most effective method for allowing women’s voices to be represented, by exploring their subjectivities in different times/​spaces in depth. Although this method does not completely remove the power disparity, I believe that it gave more power and voice to the participants by enabling them to steer the direction and order of the talk in whichever way they wanted, with minimum interruption (Bornat, 2004). The data used in this book was drawn from three different sets of interviews with North Korean human rights activists and non-​activists living in the UK, who defected from the DPRK between 2016 and 2022. The first stage of interviews examined human rights activism among North Korean defectors 46

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living in the UK, using the life history method. Nine activists, both male and female, who were involved in North Korean human rights issues were interviewed, and data was also collected from some of these activists’ public speech events. During this project, it emerged that the North Korean diaspora after the 1990s’ economic crisis is a highly gendered phenomenon, and men and women face different kinds of human rights abuses both inside and outside North Korea, as identified by existing research (Charny, 2004; Muico, 2005; Park, 2010, 2011; Hosaniak, 2013; Garcia, 2019; Cho et al, 2020). This led to the second stage, life-​history interviews with seven women defectors conducted in 2017 to explore human rights issues faced by women, some of whom were involved in activism targeting both general North Korean human rights and women’s rights. These two sets of life-​history interviews highlighted some overlapping issues around women’s human rights and the emergence of women’s activism, which was born out of their direct experiences of violations of such rights. This led to the third stage of interviews, in 2021–​22, with three female activists who are involved in North Korean women’s rights, to further investigate their motivations behind their participation in activism, together with their strategies, tactics and challenges. The North Korean women’s stories of human trafficking and/​or human smuggling1 in the process of border-​crossing and in China that I examine in Chapter 3 have been drawn from all three sets of data. While the majority of women’s activism discussed in Chapter 4 is drawn from the third project, some stories are also drawn from the second project’s data.

Accessing and recruiting participants Gaining access to North Korean defectors is generally difficult because the majority want to keep a low profile due to the risk of potential repercussions they and their families face from the regime. Also, due to the sensitive nature of the topic, especially in the second stage of interviews, it was extremely challenging to find willing participants. To overcome this, I made direct contact with an activist who was already prominent in the public domain through his vocal activism and founding of the human rights group, Free NK, and provided him with a clear explanation of my research. After a brief exchange of emails, we met and discussed my research project. During this meeting, he agreed to participate in the research and to introduce me to other potential participants. From this, I used the snowball method to access new participants, meaning that each interviewee introduced me to another. I began the second stage of interviews by re-​contacting one of the female participants from the first project, who was proactive in North Korean women’s human rights activism and a founder of Free NK. Again, I used the snowball method to contact a further six interviewees. Since the topic was 47

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extremely sensitive –​and owing to the general reluctance of many North Korean defectors, especially women, to speak to strangers –​the intermediary and the snowballing were crucial in reducing the mistrust of the participants as well as narrowing the distance between us. The third stage of interviews followed a similar approach to the second. I re-​contacted activists who had participated in the previous interviews, and combined this with the snowball method. During the third stage, I faced additional difficulties in recruiting women activists for numerous reasons. Unfortunately, there are not many North Korean female defectors proactively involved in women’s human rights activism in the UK. As my research progressed, it became clearer that very few were involved in this activism, and that the majority of those who were involved were not proactively presenting themselves. It was mainly through the key activist that I managed to access potential participants. Even so, access and recruitment did not necessarily become easier as different kinds of challenges emerged at different stages of the research. People’s reluctance to take part in interviews continued due to fear; they were not keen to speak about their experiences, which in turn operated as a barrier to accessing more people. This was particularly the case for women, who expressed fear and anxiety about their families who were still in the DPRK, as well as for their own safety, more so than the men I interviewed. Moreover, the COVID-​19 pandemic and enforced restrictions created difficulties because people were not necessarily technology-​savvy and preferred to talk face-​to-​face, rather than via online platforms such as Zoom and Skype.

Data analysis A thematic method (Ritchie et al, 2003; Braun and Clarke, 2006, 2022) was used to analyse the data. I began the analysis by familiarizing myself with relevant data sets through reading and re-​reading, as well as listening to the interview recordings to pick up emotional subtleties and nuances. After this, initial codes were generated and these were collated into potential themes, gathering together all the data relevant to each potential theme. Then, these themes were reviewed to create a thematic ‘map’ of the analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006, 2022). This was followed by defining and naming themes to refine the specifics of each one. As a result, the data for Chapter 3 was organized under the main headings of inside and outside the DPRK, and repatriation. For Chapter 4, under the umbrella of women’s human rights activism, four main themes were identified: from invisible victims to activists; challenges of activism; tactics and strategies of activism; and looking to the future. Once this process was complete, I translated the Korean extracts into English. It was logical to conduct translation at this stage, prior to systematic categorization and indexing, so that I could organize and analyse the data in 48

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English. Following this, multiple readings and re-​readings of the data further identified sub-​themes, under which all the relevant data was organized according to ‘thematic sets’ (Ritchie et al, 2003, p 229). Interview extracts under these themes were reorganized into different hierarchies of main themes and sub-​themes, such as ‘critical awareness as a starting point’ under the heading of ‘from invisible victims to activists’ and ‘significance of North Korean women’s rights and voices of defector activists’ under ‘looking to the future’. Taking into consideration the indivisible role of the researcher, as discussed previously, my position was critically reflected in the process of data analysis. As exemplified in Chapter 3 with regard to the discussion on the victimhood and voluntarism of North Korean women involved in border-​crossing, I take a dialectical approach to carefully understand and interpret the issue; for instance, moving from an introspective position to critical feminist perspectives, then to the participants’ views, followed by a return to critical reflection on the agenda, based on all three viewpoints. This process is also presented in this chapter.

Ethical challenges The projects posed serious ethical challenges and implications for both the participants and the researcher. Issues around potential risk, harm and emotional distress were significant factors. To minimize any potential risks and harm to the participants and to their families who were still in the DPRK, all necessary considerations and measures were taken, from protecting their anonymity and confidentiality, to data collection, storage and usage. All names were altered and some identifiable facts were excluded from the analysis. At the end of each interview, the participants were debriefed and provided with contact details of local free counselling and refugee services in case they needed or wished to access these. Ethical issues for all the projects were carefully reviewed and approved by the researcher’s university Research Ethics Committee (IDs: 7382, 14631, 33581). As noted earlier, researching the lived experiences of North Korean defectors posed emotional difficulties for me as the researcher. Without doubt, I experienced varying degrees of distress, primarily stemming from listening to their harrowing experiences, especially the women’s. During the interviews, I was frequently overcome by a sense of incredulity about what my interviewees had had to undergo, as well as admiration of their strength, resilience and resourcefulness. More prominently though, my distress derived from a sense of helplessness and the acute realization of the limitations of what I could do to help them, as I could not change the regime or guarantee their safety or that of their families, or guarantee them a happier life. 49

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Skinner et al (2022), drawing on their experiences of researching and/​or being victim-​survivors of domestic and sexual violence, critically evaluate the effects of ‘secondary trauma’ or ‘vicarious trauma’, which stems from the process of ‘helping or wanting to help a traumatised or suffering person’ (p 3). My experience resonates with the stories of Skinner and her collaborators in the sense that I feel a combination of shock, anger, sadness and frustration towards what has happened to North Korean people and towards a world that has not managed to stop the ongoing violence against them by the regime and China, as well as towards other opportunists who have exploited North Korean women’s vulnerabilities and unequal political power. As Skinner et al (2022) point out, there needs to be better support in place at an institutional level, beyond risk assessments, to provide appropriate and sufficient help for researchers who work with vulnerable subjects and topics. However, I was able to manage such feelings and emotions through conversations with people to whom I felt close. At the same time, the interviews with activists also gave me hope and a positive mindset. As one of my participants explained, sharing her stories with other people was a healing process for her and provided her with a sense of empowerment. Her unwavering determination and positive outlook have undoubtedly provided me with a sense of uplift and an enhanced realization that solving North Korean human rights issues is a long journey that requires patience and perseverance.

Challenges faced by a South Korean academic researching North Korean defectors’ stories Built on the intersubjective characteristics of phenomenology and the life history, the narrative data gathered during this project could be described as the co-​creative outcomes of interaction between me and the participants (Mishler, 1986; Smart, 2009). In this regard, my subject position as a migrant academic who has travelled from South Korea to the UK was significant in terms of my interest in the research topic and my relationship with the participants. I grew up in the ROK among ongoing tensions and threats from the North, but also prejudice against North Koreans, with widespread dehumanizing imagery of them as ‘devils’, reinforced by media representations and educational curricula. I had not met or spoken to a North Korean person until I started my research, thus I felt extreme curiosity and anxiety prior to meeting them. At the same time, the range of experiences faced by many North Korean people immediately captured my interest when I read their stories, which sparked my research journey in these subject areas. As a social science researcher, I felt that there was something I could do to understand their stories and also contribute to improving their existing conditions, to whatever degree. 50

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However, it would be naive to claim a smooth research process or straightforward interactions between me and my participants, even with my good intentions. Despite the arbitrary division of the region into two countries after the Korean War, principally the two sets of Koreans are perceived as sharing the same ethnicity and language. Also, even though studies have suggested a diminishing desire for reunification among South Koreans (Kim and Oh, 2001; Ha and Jang, 2016), the dream of unification has an important place in some South and North Korean people’s imaginations, especially among older generations (Kim et al, 2015). In this sense, the two Koreas appear to share similar outlooks, despite having different conceptions of what unification would look like (Park, 2014). Nevertheless, it would be untrue if I claimed tension-​free relationships between me and the participants, although we did establish trustworthy professional relationships founded on common interests and the goal of improving human rights for North Korean people. I encountered subtle yet undeniable fissures with my participants. For instance, on one occasion I was engaged in discussion about the South Korean government’s approach towards Kim Jung Un’s regime and its development of nuclear weapons, during which differences in our views emerged. With regard to the South Korean government’s policies towards North Korea, some of my participants seemed to support a more hardline approach than mine, having been frustrated by the minimal progress in addressing human rights issues or transforming North Korean people’s lives. Song and Denney (2019) additionally point out the potential challenges of interviews arising from language issues, especially involving those who cannot speak Korean and thus rely on a translator, during which some meanings can be lost. However, concurrently, they suggest that speaking Korean does not guarantee more accurate data collection and can lead to other possible barriers, such as different cultural understandings. For instance, while I was able to communicate with the interviewees without difficulty most of the time, there were a few occasions when I had to ask them to explain certain terms, such as the Kkotjebi, especially during the early period of my research when I was still learning a lot about North Korea and its refugees. Literally meaning ‘fluttering swallows’, the Kkotjebi refers to a group of North Korean male orphans and boys whose families have fallen apart during the famine, who ‘hang around train stations to tap into the shipment of goods, and roam around markets to beg or steal food’ (Chung, 2003, p 199). As someone who was brought up in relatively affluent South Korea, with no real understanding of the extreme poverty that my North Korean interviewees experienced, I was unfamiliar with this term. In addition, when I began my research on North Korean defectors in 2016, I had limited knowledge of North Korea or the realities of the North Korean people. As this suggests, there were a few moments when a vast 51

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chasm was revealed between me and the participants as a result of divergent economic and political development, as well as noticeable differences in living conditions between the South and North. Similarly, when the interviewees used terms referring to specific North Korean state institutions, it was difficult for me to understand the nature of such bodies because the DPRK has developed its own unique systems. Scholars have observed communication barriers between the two Koreas due to different societal development in the two countries and its subsequent impact on the evolution of the Korean language (Lankov, 2006; Chung, 2008). This has created a gap between the two societies that extends beyond mere linguistic differences. For instance, South Koreans regard North Korean settlers in the ROK as outsiders who share few commonalities (Ha and Jang, 2016). Similarly, migrant North and South Koreans in the London suburb of New Malden live parallel lives, with the continuation of divisions between the two through various exclusionary practices and ‘othering’ of each other (Watson, 2015). I made a conscious effort to be honest about my lack of understanding of certain terms while also making sure to respect their authority and knowledge in that area, in order to minimize any potential power disparity between us (The Personal Narratives Group, 1989; Bornat, 2004; Greenberg et al, 2021). I also became conscientious about different life experiences and social and economic positions between me and the participants, and the potential implications for their emotional experiences during and after the interview. For instance, post-​interview, some women participants asked me questions about my upbringing and life in South Korea. I could sense that they were comparing their lives with mine while listening to my answers, as they mentioned in a regretful tone that their lives could have been different if only they had been born in a different country. These feelings of unfairness and injustice are reflected in their daily lives in the UK, where they deliberately hide where they came from, as illustrated in the narrative of one participant: Ms D: ‘Because the country is poor, everyone looks down on us and laughs if we say we’re from North Korea. Because of that, I don’t say I’m a North Korean when I’m outside. If people ask me where I’m from, I either say I’m from China or South Korea. If I say I’m from North Korea, they look at me with strange eyes; everybody looks at me with strange eyes.’ Song and Denney (2019) discuss power dynamics stemming from several intersecting factors, such as the age, gender and nationality of researchers, with an older white male having the highest symbolic power. Drawing on their research experience, Song and Denney suggest that North Korean men typically consider (younger) women researchers to be subordinates, reflecting 52

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an ingrained patriarchal gender bias. This is demonstrated, for instance, by making inappropriate comments about the researcher’s appearance or marital status, along with using non-​honorific endings when referring to her. In my personal experience, this was not necessarily the case. I did not feel that male participants treated me disrespectfully or as a subordinate. They always used an honorific form, professor (gyosunim), to refer to me, as is general practice in Korea when addressing all university lecturers, and they were courteous in their general approach to me. This was also mutual –​ I always used the honorific form of -n​ im at the end of each participant’s name to show my respect, and there was a clear professional boundary between us. This might have been influenced by the tone and attitude set by the founder of Free NK, who is an influential figure among its members. My position also underwent changes during the process of data analysis in relation to North Korean women’s border-​crossing and trafficking/​ smuggling, as discussed previously. My initial view was aligned with seeing them as ‘victims’ of the structure and harsh regime, who were forced to make undesirable choices as a channel for their survival. However, as I progressed with the data analysis and my interviews with women activists, I began to question this initial view. Firstly, their voluntarism and agency became a crucial aspect. Also, these women had a strong desire to present themselves as proactive social actors, and not as victims. In that sense their choice and action were critical for their ‘new’ life and activism. The importance of voluntarism has also been highlighted by other academics (Choi, 2014; Kook, 2018). In particular, during the process of critical reflection on my subject position, I became conscious of my pre-​ perception, which was influenced by feminists’ critiques of the hegemonic Western discourse (Choi, 2014; Sanchez, 2016; Kook, 2018; Zhang et al, 2018; Mai et al 2021) on smuggled and/​or trafficked women from North Korea and the Global South being viewed as victims. I critically questioned whether my perception had been shaped by my relatively privileged position as an academic from South Korea, and whether I was thus seeing them as pitiable victims of atrocious treatment. As a consequence, it seemed necessary for me to ask how female activists –​who had first-​hand experience themselves –​perceived North Korean women’s experiences of trafficking and smuggling. All the women activists agreed that they regarded North Korean female border-​crossers as victims, regardless of whether they were forced or had volunteered: Ms A: Interviewer:

We talk about comfort women in South Korea and they are reported as victims. Today’s 21st-​century victims are North Korean women. How about those who volunteer to find brokers and husbands? 53

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Ms A:

Even though there might be a small difference between those who have volunteered and those who have been forced by parents, ‘victims’ is the correct description. Now these people don’t live different lives in China. They live the same lives.

Their victimhood also stems from the circumstances of North Korea, which compel women, especially those who come from the hostile class or live in poverty, to rely on extreme measures to cross the border to China for survival: Ms K: ‘I think those who go to China through marriage by finding brokers choose to do it to survive or to save their families, because they have no other means. But there are many cases of them being resold and resold, and brokers misuse North Korean women as a way of making money.’ Ms F: ‘Those who have bad family backgrounds [referring to the North Korean caste system of Songbun] or are poor get sold when they enter China. They can’t avoid becoming a victim.’ This brings my discussion back to intersubjectivity: how the interactions between researcher and participant are ongoing processes of development, not only during the data collection but also during the processes of analysing the data and writing.

Insider and outsider My subject position as a South Korean academic researching North Korean women defectors’ experiences presents several complex and at times contradictory issues regarding the question of insider and outsider status. My position as someone who cares about and supports North Korean human rights activism undoubtedly helped me to earn their trust, having provided me with almost insider status. On the other hand, there were several barriers between us that revealed my position as an outsider. As discussed by Dywer and Buckle (2009), the insider–​outsider position of researchers is liquid and fluid, moving from one position to another, depending on shared experiences and views on certain issues. This challenges the dichotomous approach. They urge researchers to carefully consider and reflect upon their social membership of the research group, based on gender, ethnicity, race, shared experiences and so on. From this standpoint, the core component of good research is not insider or outsider status, but the researcher’s ‘ability to be open, authentic, honest, deeply interested in the experience of one’s research participants, and committed to accurately and 54

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adequately representing their experience’ (p 59). Thus, the insider–​outsider dichotomy can be redefined as ‘contextual’ (Christensen and Dahl, 1997). Rather than using a binary either/​or approach, the hyphenated insider–​ outsider can be seen as ‘a third space, a space between, a space of paradox, ambiguity, and ambivalence, as well as conjunction and disjunction’ (Dywer and Buckle, 2009, p 60). In this respect, being self-​reflective is crucial. As noted by Nowicka and Ryan (2015), researchers can challenge prior assumptions by reflecting upon their own migratory pathways. Simultaneously, researchers should not assume any a priori commonality with their research participants and should set out to conduct research from a position of uncertainty ‘to move beyond methodological groupism’ (Nowicka and Ryan, 2015, p 2). As a migrant myself, I have a certain degree of insight into the difficulties and profound impact that migration can have on individuals. For instance, I came to Britain when South Korea was less well known to people in the UK, other than to an older generation who had fought in the Korean War in the early 1950s, and the image of Korea in their memories was of an extremely poor and underdeveloped country torn apart by the war. Although I came as a high-​fee-​paying student, I felt largely invisible and the way I was treated was as someone who was seeking benefits from the UK. In this regard, I comprehend the negative experiences that migrants face in their ‘host’ society, especially when there are stark power disparities between the exit and receiving countries, based on economic and political status. Having said that, I landed on British soil after one direct flight from the ROK. This relatively straightforward journey is discernibly different from the ‘traversing’ journeys that the vast majority of North Korean refugees are forced to make in order to reach a safe country, crossing multiple borders in a highly dangerous manner (Lim, 2021). While I empathize with any migrants’ experiences, drawing on my personal ones, I have to acknowledge that what North Korean defectors have to go through is largely beyond my comprehension. Nowicka and Ryan (2015) additionally point out the intersection between gender and ethnicity and its role in migration research. However, I argue that simply looking at the intersection between gender and ethnicity would limit the understanding of the differences between me and my participants. While we share the same gender and ethnicity, our experiences have diverged due to our heterogeneous class positions and different nationalities (South or North Korean), which determine rights regarding freedom of movement. These considerations clearly illustrate the multilayered and complex subject positions that I have as a researcher studying our ‘sister’ country, which has been divided by the arbitrary parallel line since 1953. Consistent with this, Rabe (2003) suggests that the position of social researchers as ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ is fluid. This status might change at different stages of the research or depending on different aspects; for 55

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example, ethnicity, gender and the actual experiences of womanhood in different contexts. Interviews with young Chinese women conducted by Liu (2006) reveal that even sharing the same gender and nationality does not automatically mean that participants grant an insider status to the researcher. This extends to different perceptions by interviewer and interviewee about variations in their social, cultural and personal circumstances, which can have an impact on the power dynamics between them (Tang, 2002). This suggests that the interviewee’s perception of the researcher in relation to a range of factors can also be important in determining their insider or outsider status. My deep interest in improving North Korean women’s human rights issues and my support for these women’s activism might have offered me insider status, especially in the eyes of key activists who have worked with me for a few years. At the same time, to others I am an outsider who potentially has more power and could pose a risk to their security. For instance, there were occasions when some of my participants were reluctant to talk, or tried to retract what they had said about their migration to the UK after having lived in South Korea, because this is treated as illegal by the British Home Office. This caused a certain degree of anxiety among some participants, who feared being exposed, and I had to reassure them that their identity would remain anonymous and confidential. This indicates the tenuous relationship I have with some of the participants, and the perceived distance between us, especially by the interviewees. Additionally, gender dynamics between researcher and participant can play an influential role in the content of interviews (Rabe, 2003). If I were a man, the women participants might have responded differently to certain questions, or might have felt uncomfortable about sharing certain stories that are seen as taboo to talk about with men; for instance, details of trafficking and sexual abuse, as was the case with the Xhosa men and women in the Western Cape, South Africa, in the study by Spiegel and Mehlwana (1997). For example, some of my participants mentioned that they did not talk about their traumatic experiences with their husbands. Moreover, insider status can be a hindrance to research due to cultural norms and taboos (Rabe, 2003). North Korean women might have found it easier to share their stories with me, knowing that they do not have to interact with me daily, as they do with some of their fellow North Korean defectors. At the same time, I acknowledge that sharing the same gender did not necessarily lead to them opening up about everything to me, and there may still have been some aspects that were kept from me.

Question of authenticity and truth There is a question regarding the authenticity of interview data, because some portions of testimonies from defectors have turned out to be fabricated 56

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or untrue, including some published autobiographies, such as Escape from Camp 14, Shin Dong-​hyuk’s story in Gulag, written by Blaine Harden in 2012. In association with this, Song and Denney (2019) point out numerous methodological challenges arising from studying North Korean migrants, one of which is the reliability of testimonies from interviewees. According to these scholars, since most defectors are from North Hamgyung and Ryanggang, two provinces near the border with China, treating their testimonies as representative of North Korea would be problematic. In addition to this sample bias, another issue is related to the influence caused by offering monetary incentives to interviewees. These could encourage interviewees to lie in order to present more sensational and ‘marketable’ stories that monolithically depict life in the DPRK as ‘hell’ and its people as victims of an ‘evil’ government who need to be rescued by ‘charitable’ nations. In my research, I provided a low-​value voucher for Asian or Korean supermarkets in the local area at the end of each interview, as a gesture of thanks for their assistance because they had to take time off from work or other commitments. However, my participants were not aware of this until the end of their interviews as I did not want to use it as an incentive for them to participate, nor was the amount substantial enough to influence them or to distort their stories. In fact, most of them did not want to talk about their experiences because they were too painful and shameful to share. Resonating with this, Jackson (2019, pp 13–​14), in his attempt to listen to the stories of refugees, encountered: Their hesitancy, awkwardness, and suspicion. In part, this reflected the unspeakable experiences many of these refugees had undergone –​ events that not only resisted recollection but lay beyond their power to comprehend, interpret, or narrate … in extremis one often finds that the truth will get you nowhere or get you into trouble. One has to learn to carefully select, censor, and misrepresent one’s reality in order to get one’s way –​to escape from terror, to cross a border, to be selected for emigration, to avoid racist insults and condescending expectations in the country of asylum … Stories are often cover stories, defences against danger and hurt. I also noticed some gaps in the participants’ accounts where some of them tried to hide their life in South Korea prior to coming to the UK as it was ‘illegal’ most of the time, as stated above. This is because the Korean Constitution treats North Korea and North Koreans as legally belonging to South Korea (Choi, 2018). As a consequence, those who seek asylum or refugee status in the UK after staying in the ROK are treated as ‘bogus’ asylum seekers by the Home Office, because they can legally claim citizenship status in South Korea (Song and Bell, 2018). This raises some critical questions 57

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about the validity of my research and the interview data. While I value debates presented by some researchers, such as Song and Denney, about improving reliability and validity, I simultaneously question some of the limitations presented by the dominant research paradigm, which continues to emulate the positivist approach. An equally important question in relation to any research, especially qualitative research, that should be posed is why participants have not told the truth, and what this can potentially tell us about the social reality in which they are situated. The Personal Narratives Group (PNG) (1989) is highly critical of the reductionist approach of seeking a or the truth in women’s stories. Instead, the PNG emphasizes the importance of truths to elucidate the multiple ways in which women’s perceptions, experience and history are embedded in their stories. Kvale (1995), in his critical examination of validity in social research, questions the position of the trinity of validity, reliability and generalization in modern social sciences. He argues that equating true knowledge with the representation of an objective reality has given way to the discursive construction of reality in this postmodern period. In this respect, knowledge is regarded as being produced through interaction, by which heterogeneous interpretations may emerge. According to Kvale (1995, p 27), the importance of validity in this context depends on ‘the quality of craftsmanship in an investigation, which includes continually checking, questioning, and theoretically interpreting the findings’. Hence, not only the method used, but also the researcher and their ethical integrity, become pivotal in achieving the quality of craftsmanship. In other words, the validity of qualitative research does not rely on how accurately the data represents objective reality; instead, it depends on the quality of data collection and analysis conducted through the highly critical, reflective and open approaches of researchers in interaction with their participants. Consonant with this, the kind of truth that I sought through my research was not the ‘authentic’ experiences of the participants’ migration. Rather, from a phenomenological perspective, my focus was on the subjective perception and understanding of their experiences in relation to the processes of their escape from North Korea, their life in China and other countries, and ultimately their involvement in human rights activism. This is significant in unpacking and understanding the social conditions that have shaped their views of the world and their approach to activism. Moreover, as noted previously, life histories are constructed on the basis of memories. Without doubt, memories can be inaccurate, and in many ways such inaccuracy and how these people created their narratives are more important than determining the accurate truth of the process. In addition, the fact that they may have tried to hide or omit aspects of their stories can be significant in understanding the social and cultural realities of their past and present lives. For instance, in relation to the biographical questionnaire asking 58

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about number of children, one of my participants initially did not reveal that he had a child left behind in the DPRK. It was only when I pressed gently that he revealed he had an older child remaining in North Korea. This fact exposed a strong sense of guilt and the inner pain he experienced owing to his limited ability to extricate his child from the DPRK. This was due to the increased security under Kim Jong Un and the subsequent danger of trying to escape from the regime, despite numerous attempts in the past, as well as the extortionate cost of hiring brokers. His omission not only reveals his emotions, but also the structural, political situation and human rights violations in North Korea (specifically, the prevention of freedom of movement and food insecurity that led him and his family to escape in the first place). The circumstances that meant he had had to leave his child behind concerned the strong possibility that all the family members would die during the border-​crossing to China due to patrols by border guards, who will shoot ‘illegal’ crossers. These risks led to him leaving his son with his own parents as a way of saving at least one family member. The fact that this participant gave up on bringing his child out additionally reveals the tightened border controls since Kim Jong Un took power (HRW, 2018) and the hostile global border regime that is prevalent in many countries (Griffiths and Morgan, 2017). In relation to gaps in their interviews regarding their secondary migration to the UK, we can unpack the ‘hostile environment’ policy, which has been re-​branded as a ‘compliant policy’ by the UK government to discourage immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers and their families from settling in the UK (Home Office, 2017; Sirriyeh, 2015; Webber, 2019; Griffiths and Yeo, 2021). This hostile environment arguably forces North Korean refugees to lie or hide the fact that they had lived in South Korea and possess South Korean citizenship, because they are worried about revealing the truth and being caught by the UK government. Thus, by focusing on ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions, rather than on whether their interviews and testimonies are truth or lies, we can explain the vital structural forces and barriers, as well as social realities, which have led interviewees to present information that is not true. They also feared that their revelations might harm themselves or their families because they were aware of North Korean spies planted in the UK by the government to monitor defectors. Considering that their lives have been built on surveillance and continuous terror, it is even more understandable that they fear punitive political systems founded on suspicion of other people. This is crucial information that we can use to contextualize their experiences and to understand how certain phenomena were formed and perceived by North Korean defectors and activists. Their experiences are part of the whole, and they shed light on the environment in which they are constructed. 59

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Conclusion In this chapter, I have examined the methodological issues arising from studying North Korean defectors, starting with a phenomenological approach. As discussed above, researching this group of people presented numerous challenges and complex questions in conjunction with my subject position. At the same time, this has provided me with a worthy opportunity to reflect critically on validity and other pertinent agendas. By adopting a feminist methodology in conjunction with phenomenology, I have endeavoured to unearth and make visible North Korean women’s stories, told from their perspectives, that were hidden beneath the surface. Life-​history interviews allowed me to deploy a method that reduces power disparities between me and the participants while providing a wealth of rich data, through which I was able to witness the holistic life trajectories of participants and thus enabled me to comprehend the processes of their development as activists. In addition, through our interactions in various settings via interviews and other public events, it has become apparent that we are working towards a common goal in different ways, and this established a platform for mutual trust and respect in spite of divergences in our social, economic and political backgrounds. This has been important in my research context, where compassion for humanity forms a foundational moral value, allowing us to realize that our common ground is more important than our differences. Note As Kara (2017) notes, human smuggling involves third parties who facilitate irregular migration across national borders, while human trafficking refers to human smuggling that involves force, fraud or coercion prior to the movement, and forced labour or slavery afterwards, which can happen both nationally and internationally. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (2014, p 2) defines human trafficking as:   ‘The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.’   In contrast to human trafficking, which can take place both within a country and across different countries, human (migrant) smuggling only takes place across nation-​state borders, and comprises smugglers assisting people to enter or stay in a country illegally, for financial and material gain (UN Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC, n.d.).   As noted by the UNODC, smuggled migrants also face often dangerous and hazardous situations, including acute human rights violations, imposed by smugglers. Reflecting this, some scholars, such as Sharma (2005), challenge a clear distinction between the two concepts because often both smugglers and traffickers move people through illicit channels of migration and expose them to exploitative situations. My position is in line with these scholars, and I have used both terms connected by ‘and/​or’ or a back slash to indicate that, for North Korean women, the boundary between trafficking and smuggling is mostly not 1

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clear-​cut because both forms involve cross-​border movements that are illegal. Although some women voluntarily hire professional smugglers to go to China or volunteer to be sold, their vulnerable situation is additionally likely to cause them to be treated in an exploitative and oppressive manner, as demonstrated by my data.

References Becker, H.S. (1966) ‘Introduction’, in C.R. Shaw, The Jack Roller: A Delinquent Boy's Own Story, Chicago: University Chicago Press (Phoenix Books), pp v–​xviii. Bell, S. (2009) DES Daughters: Embodied Knowledge and the Transformation of Women’s Health Politics, Philadelphia, PN: The Temple University Press. Bornat, J. (2004) ‘Oral history’, in C. Seale, G. Giampietro, J.F. Gubrium and D. Silverman (eds) Qualitative Research Practice, London: Sage Publications, pp 34–​47. Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006) ‘Using thematic analysis in psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2): 77–​101. https://​doi.org/​10.1191/​ 147808​8706​qp06​3oa Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2022) Thematic Analysis: A Practical Guide, Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications. Bynum, W. and Varpio, L. (2018) ‘When I say … hermeneutic phenomenology’, Medical Education, 52: 252–​3. Charny, J.R. (2004) ‘North Koreans in China: a human rights analysis’, International Journal of Korean Unification Studies, 13(2): 75–​97. Cho, J-​A., Yee, J-​S. and Yi, H-​Y. (2020) ‘Daily lives of North Korean women and gender politics’, KINU. Available from: www.kinu.or.kr/​pyxis-​api/​ 1/​digi​tal-​files/​9765b​5cf-​8b83-​442e-​aa10-​71021​4dc8​661 [Accessed 20 March 2021]. Choi, E-​Y. (2014) ‘North Korean women’s narratives of migration: challenging hegemonic discourses of trafficking and geopolitics’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 104(2): 271–​79. Choi, G. (2018) ‘North Korean refugees in South Korea: change and challenges in settlement support policy’, The Korean Journal of International Studies, 16(1): 77–​98. Christensen, D.H. and Dahl, C.M. (1997) ‘Rethinking research dichotomies’, Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal, 25(3): 269–​85. Chung, B-​H. (2003) ‘Living dangerously in two worlds: the risks and tactics of North Korean refugee children in China’, Korea Journal, Autumn: 191–​211. Chung, B-​H. (2008) ‘Between defector and migrant: identities and strategies of North Koreans in South Korea’, Korean Studies, 32: 1–​27. Dalberg, H. and Darlberg, K. (2020) ‘Phenomenology of science and the art of radical questioning’, Qualitative Inquiry, 26(7): 889–​96.

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Dimond, J.E. (2016) ‘Writing life stories: a phenomenological study of memory and meaning for people with early-​stage Alzheimer’s disease’, All Theses & Dissertations, 220. Available from: https://​dig​ital​comm​ons.usm. maine.edu/​etd/​220 [Accessed 2 March 2019]. Dywer, S.C. and Buckle, J.L. (2009) ‘The space between: on being an insider-​outsider in qualitative research’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 8(1): 54–​63. Frank, A.W. (2002) ‘Why study people’s stories? The dialogical ethics of narrative analysis’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 1(1): 109–​17. Frank, G. (1979) ‘Finding the common denominator: a phenomenological critique of life history method’, Ethos, 7(1): 68–​94. Garcia, A.B.M. (2019) ‘Denouncing human trafficking in China: North Korean women’s memoirs as evidence’, State Crime Journal, 8(1): 59–​79. Giorgi, A. (1975) ‘An application of phenomenological method in psychology’, in A. Giorgi and C. Murray (eds) Studies in Psychology, Vol. II, New Jersey: Humanities Press, pp 82–​103. Greenberg, D., Clair, J.A. and Ladge, J. (2021) ‘Symposium: a feminist perspective on conducting personally relevant research: working mothers studying pregnancy and motherhood’, Academy of Management Perspectives, 35(3): 400–​17. Griffiths, M. and Morgan, C. (2017) Immigration Enforcement and Article 8 Rights: Mixed-​Immigration Status Families Political Emphasis on Forced Removal is Splitting Up and Harming Families, Policy Report 19. University of Bristol: Policy Press. Griffiths, M. and Yeo, C. (2021) ‘The UK’s hostile environment: deputising immigration control’, Critical Social Policy, 41(4): 521–​44. Groenewald, T. (2004) ‘A phenomenological research design illustrated’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 3(1): 42–​55. Ha, S.E. and Jang, S-​J. (2016) ‘National identity in a divided nation: South Koreans’ attitudes toward North Korean defectors and the reunification of two Koreas’, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 55: 109–​19. Harding, S. (1987a) Feminism and Methodology, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Harding, S. (1987b) ‘The method question’, Hypatia, 2(3): 19–​35. Harding, S. (1992) ‘Rethinking standpoint epistemology: what is “strong objectivity?”’, The Centennial Review, 36(3): 437–​70. Heidegger, M. (2005 [1994]) Introduction to Phenomenological Research, D.O. Dahlstrom (trans), Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, M. (2019 [1962]) Being and Time, J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (trans), Eastford, CT: Martino Fine Books.

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Lanford, M., Tierney, W.G. and Lincoln, Y. (2018) ‘The art of life history: novel approaches, future directions’, Qualitative Inquiry, 25(5): 459–​63. Lankov, A. (2006) ‘Bitter taste of paradise’, Journal of East Asian Studies, 6: 105–​37. Leurs, K. and Olivieri, D. (2014) ‘Introduction’, in K. Leurs and D. Olivieri (eds) Everyday Feminist Research Praxis: Doing Gender in the Netherlands, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp xxiv–​xxxix. Lim, H-​J. (2021) ‘“Traversing”: familial challenges for escaped North Koreans’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 34(4): 4279–​99. DOI: https://d​ oi.org/​ 10.1093/​jrs/​feab​017 Lincoln, Y. and Lanford, M. (2019) ‘Life history’s second life’, Qualitative Inquiry, 25(5): 464–​70. Liu, J. (2006) ‘Researching Chinese women’s lives: ‘insider’ research and life history interviewing’, Oral History, 34(1): 43–​52. Mai, N., Macioti, P.G., Bennachie, C., Fehrenbacher, A.E., Giametta, C., Hoefinger, H. and Musto, J. (2021) ‘Migration, sex work and trafficking: the racialized bordering politics of sexual humanitarianism’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 44(9): 1607–​28. DOI: 10.1080/​01419870.2021.1892790 Mascolo, M.F. and Kallio, E. (2020) ‘The phenomenology of between: an intersubjective epistemology for psychological science’, Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 33(1): 1–​28. DOI: 10.1080/​10720537.2019.1635924 Maynes, M.J., Pierce, J. and Laslett, B. (2008) Telling Stories: The Use of Personal Narratives in the Social Sciences and History, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. McCormick, M. (2012) ‘Feminist research ethics, informed consent, and potential harms’, The Hilltop Review, 6(1): 23–​33. https://​schol​arwo​rks. wmich.edu/​hillto​prev​iew/​vol6/​iss1/​5 McCrea, J.F.K. (1994) ‘A woman’s story: E pluribus unum’, in A. Lieblich and R. Josselson (eds) Exploring Identity and Gender: The Narrative Study of Lives, Vol. 2, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp 195–​229. Mishler, E.G. (1986) Research Interviewing: Context and Narrative, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Muico, N.K. (2005) An Absence of Choice: The Sexual Exploitation of North Korean Women in China, London: Anti-​Slavery International. Neubauer, B.E., Witkop, C.T. and Varpio, L. (2019) ‘How phenomenology can help us learn from the experiences of others’, Perspectives on Medical Education, 8: 90–​97. Nowicka, M. and Ryan, L. (2015) ‘Beyond insiders and outsiders in migration research: rejecting a priori commonalities. Introduction to the FQS thematic section on “researcher, migrant, woman: methodological implications of multiple positionalities in migration studies”’, Forum Qualitative Research, 16(2): 1–​15. 64

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Oakley, A. (1974) The Sociology of Housework, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Oakley, A. (1981) ‘Interviewing women: a contradiction in terms’, in H. Roberts (ed) Doing Feminist Research, London: Routledge, pp 30–​61. Oakley, A. (2016) ‘Interviewing women again: power, time and the gift’, Sociology, 50(1): 195–​213. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) (2014) ‘Human rights and human trafficking’, Fact Sheet No. 36. Available from: www.ohchr.org/​sites/​defa​ult/​files/​Docume​nts/​Publi​ cati​ons/​FS36​_​en.pdf [Accessed 6 November 2021]. Park, K-​A. (2011) ‘Economic crisis, women’s changing economic roles, and their implications for women’s status in North Korea’, The Pacific Review, 24(2): 159–​77. Park, Y.H. (2014) ‘South and North Korea’s views on the unification of the Korean peninsula and inter-​Korean relations’, The 2nd KRIS-​Brookings Joint Conference on ‘Security and Diplomatic Cooperation between ROK and US for the Unification of the Korean Peninsula’, 21 January, Seoul. Available from: www.brookin ​ gs.edu/w ​ p-c​ ont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2014/​04/​park-​ young-​ho-​paper.pdf [Accessed 25 November 2022]. Park, Y-​J. (2010) ‘North Korean gender roles and changes in women: under the military-​first politics and the economic crisis’, The Women’s Studies, 79(2): 155–​98. The Personal Narratives Group (eds) (1989) Interviewing Women’s Lives: Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Polt, R. (1999) Heidegger: An Introduction, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Rabe, M. (2003) ‘Revisiting ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ as social researchers’, African Sociological Review, 7(2): 149–​61. Ritchie, J., Spencer, L. and O’Connor, W. (2003) ‘Carrying out qualitative research’, in J. Ritchie and J. Lewis (eds) Qualitative Research Practice, London: Sage Publications, pp 219–​62. Sadala, M.L.A. and Adorno, R. de C.F. (2001) ‘Phenomenology as a method to investigate the experiences lived: a perspective from Husserl and Merleau-​Ponty’s thought’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 37(3): 282–​93. Sanchez, G. (2016) ‘Women’s participation in the facilitation of human smuggling: the case of the US Southwest’, Geopolitics, 21(2): 387–​406. DOI: 10.1080/​14650045.2016.1140645 Schutz, A. (1967) The Phenomenology of the Social World, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Sirriyeh, A. (2015) ‘“All you need is love and £18,600”: class and the new UK family migration rules’, Critical Social Policy, 35(2): 228–​47. https://​ doi.org/​10.1177/​02610​1831​4563​039

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Skinner, T., Bloomfield-​Utting, J, Geoghegan-​Fittall, S., Roberts, N., Smith, O., Sweetland, S. and Taylor, H. (2022) ‘A focus on ethics and researcher wellbeing’, in R. Forester-​Jones (ed) Research Handbook on Ethics in Social Research, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Smart, C. (2009) ‘Shifting horizons: reflections on qualitative methods’, Feminist Theory, 10(3): 295–​308. Song, J. and Bell, M. (2018) ‘North Korean secondary asylum in the UK’, Migration Studies: 1–​20. Song, J. and Denney, S. (2019) ‘Studying North Korea through North Korean migrants: lessons from the field’, Critical Asian Studies, 51(3): 451–​66. DOI: 10.1080/​14672715.2019.1611462 Spiegel, A.D. and Mehlwana, A.M. (1997) ‘Family as social network: kinship and sporadic migrancy in the Western Khayelitsha’, Co-​operative Research Programme on Marriage and Family Life. Pretoria: Human Science Research Council, Report HG/​MF-​31. Spooner, M. (2019) ‘A life history of place: a future place for life histories?’, Qualitative Inquiry, 25(5): 513–​22. Ssali, S., Theobald, S. and Hawkins, K. (2015) ‘Life histories: A research method to capture people’s experiences of health systems in post-​conflict countries’, Available from: www.heal​thsy​stem​sglo​bal.org/​blog/​54/​Life-​ histor​ies-​A-​resea​rch-​met​hod-​to-​capt​ure-​peop​ le-0​ 39-s​ -e​ xper​ ienc​ es-o ​ f-h ​ ea​ lth-​syst​ems-​in-​post-​confl​ict-​countr​ies.html [Accessed 20 June 2021]. Tang, N. (2002) ‘Interviewer and interviewee relationships between women’, Sociology, 36 (3): 703–​21. Thompson, M.G. (2005) ‘Phenomenology of intersubjectivity: a historical overview of the concept and its clinical implications’, Intersubjectivity and Relational Theory in Psychoanalysis, 1–​36. United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) (n.d.) ‘Human trafficking and migrant smuggling’. Available from: www.unodc.org/​e4j/​ en/​second​ary/​human-​traf​fi ck​ing-​and-​migr​ant-s​ muggli​ ng.html [Accessed 10 December 2022]. Watson, I. (2015) ‘The Korean diaspora and belonging in the UK: identity tensions between North and South Koreans’, Social Identities, 21(6): 545–​61. Watson, L. (1976) ‘Understanding a life history as a subjective document: hermeneutical and phenomenological perspectives’, Ethos, 4(1): 95–​131. Webber, F. (2019) ‘Commentary: on the creation of the UK’s “hostile environment”’, Race & Class, 60(4): 76–​87. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​ 03063​9681​9825​788 Welman, J.C. and Kruger, S.J. (1999) Research Methodology for the Business and Administrative Sciences, Johannesburg, South Africa: International Thompson. Zhang, S., Sanchez, G. and Achilli, L. (2018) ‘Crimes of solidarity in mobility: alternative views on migrant smuggling’, Annals AAPSS, 676(March): 6–​15. 66

3

Cycle of Oppression: Violations of Human Rights against North Korean Women Introduction As discussed in Chapter 1, testimonies provided by those who have fled North Korea have exposed a plethora of human rights abuses against women, both within North Korea and in China, as well as during the process of either crossing the border to China or being repatriated to the North. The life history interview data I collected revealed a continuous cycle of appalling maltreatment of women beyond the physical boundaries of the regime. Drawing on these findings, this chapter examines the human rights abuses experienced by North Korean women both inside and outside the regime. Topics that I discuss are: domestic violence; sexual harassment in the workplace; women’s hygiene and health issues; human trafficking and smuggling to China; and gender-​based violence against women during the process of forced deportation and in DPRK prisons. These topic areas have previously been investigated and widely debated by scholars and human rights organizations. While these studies have revealed a range of gender-​based rights violations faced by North Korean women inside the DPRK and China, most of the focus has been on women’s experiences within a particular country: for example, gender issues in the DPRK (Lim, 2005; Jung and Dalton, 2006; Kang, 2008; Park, 2010; Park, 2011; Haggard and Noland, 2012; Hosaniak, 2013; Kim, 2014; Eom and Kim, 2016; Gooptar, 2017; Yang, 2018; Cho et al, 2020); women’s experiences during the process of migration to China and/​or in China (Charny, 2004; Lankov, 2004; Muico, 2005; CRS, 2007; Kim et al, 2009; Chang et al, 2008; Choi, 2014; Kook, 2018; Garcia, 2019); and/​or their treatment upon repatriation to the DPRK (Charny, 2004; Muico, 2005; Yang, 2018). By investigating North Korean women’s gendered experiences using a circular framework between North Korea, China and back to North Korea, this chapter seeks 67

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to bring together these debates and examine a common thread interwoven across the lives of these women throughout their circular movements. It does so while applying critical feminist perspectives on gender, human smuggling/​ trafficking and agency/​victimhood. Gender segregation also characterizes North Korean women’s lives in other countries, such as South Korea, where North Korean women are subject to high rates of physical, emotional, economic and sexual abuse (Um et al, 2016). Nonetheless, the gravity of human rights violations is arguably less severe in these other countries than in the DPRK and China. This is due to intersecting factors between North Korea and China deriving from their patriarchal and sexist cultures and structures, and the punitive border regime,1 as well as the bilateral agreement that denies the basic rights of North Koreans in China and forcibly returns them to the DPRK. Therefore, I seek to call attention to women’s pronounced gendered experiences within this cycle of space, due to this intersection, rather than broadening the spatial dimension beyond these two nation-​states. I argue that North Korean women experience such a continuous cycle of oppression throughout their lives as a direct result of the combination of the patriarchal structure deeply entrenched in the North –​with its harsh international border governance –​ and a regional politics with a primary focus on protecting national interests, thus overlooking human rights issues faced by North Korean women. This chapter consists of three parts. The first part examines narratives about human rights issues faced by women in the DPRK, such as domestic violence and sexual harassment. The second part explores women’s experiences during and after their escape to China, primarily focusing on human trafficking and forced/​voluntary marriages to Chinese men. The final part investigates violations of the fundamental rights of women during and after their repatriation to the DPRK.

Human rights abuses inside North Korea ‘People in North Korea live without the knowledge of their human rights and freedom. Women’s lives are especially tragic. North Korea’s laws relating to women clearly state that women have equal rights to men in all aspects of society, politics and the economy. North Korea purports to treat gender equality as important, but this is a mere appearance if you look at the reality. The real lives of North Korean women are not free because of Namjonyeobi2 and the traditional patriarchal culture, and their rights are routinely violated, never mind being protected. In particular, due to the food crisis, the national rationing system has collapsed, and companies and factories have been shut down with no ability to pay wages. In these circumstances, it has been women who have bought food for the survival of their 68

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families by trading in Jangmadang3 and women have been mobilised –​as collective labour to work for free on construction sites or farms. As a result, women are exploited from dawn to dusk like cows or horses, and they live with huge mental and physical burdens. Also, at home, the husband has absolute rights and decision-​making power over household matters both large and small, including children’s problems. If the wife expresses her own opinion or argues for her own view, she gets treated harshly or suffers physical violence. However, in North Korea, this kind of domestic violence is regarded as a simple family problem and thus is not treated as a social problem. This shows that North Korea does not recognise domestic violence as a serious problem that violates women’s human rights. In addition, senior members of corporations freely exercise sexual violence against women, using a false promise of party membership or offering an easy work role as bait, and they don’t consider such behaviour to be serious. Moreover, with the escalating economic crisis, it has become common for women to be sold to China for family survival or forcefully kidnapped and sold. When I was repatriated to North Korea after escaping to China, I witnessed prison guards beating a pregnant woman to abort [the foetus], as well as killing a newborn baby who was struggling to survive by covering the infant’s face with a vinyl bag. Such tragic human rights abuses against North Korean women are only the tip of the iceberg.’ This is a statement made by Ms K, who spoke at an event that I organized at my university for the general public in 2017 to raise awareness of North Korean women’s human rights issues. This account, based on Ms K’s lived experience, encapsulates the state of North Korean women’s human rights issues that I seek to examine in detail in this section. As made clear in Ms K’s words, the DPRK’s stance and practice on gender issues has historically been ambiguous and paradoxical, reflecting the combined influence of Marxist-​Leninism, Confucianism and Juche, a unique Suryoung-​centred North Korean ideology that implicitly embodies male domination over women. While the regime adopted the Soviet-​ style gender equality measures early in its history, and female labour was seen as an integral part of its nation-​building (Halliday, 1985; Lankov and Kim, 2014), in reality the subjugation of women has continued (Kim, 2011; Yang, 2018). For example, the DPRK instituted the Act of Equal Rights for Men and Women in 1946, with the intention of transforming the old feudal gender relations and encouraging women to take part in all spheres of life, along with other measures that supposedly emancipated them (Park, 1992–​93; Lee, 2005). However, although the North Korean 69

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government has insisted on women’s participation in the labour market, there has been less emphasis on women’s economic role and significantly more emphasis on their traditional domestic role as home carers than in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe (Lankov and Kim, 2014). Consonant with this, Jung and Dalton (2006) question whether the commitment to achieving gender equality by the Kim regime is genuine, despite the rhetoric found in official documents. Jung and Dalton go on to highlight that the traditional gendered division of labour is deeply entrenched in North Korea and thus women do most of the domestic work, with little contribution from men. Therefore, equal status between the two genders has not been achieved, and the rigid patriarchal structure is deeply embedded in every institution of North Korean society (Park, 1992–​93), as illuminated by Ms A: ‘In North Korea there are no women’s human rights. There is a saying in North Korea, “men are the sky and women are the earth”. So even if women are academically brilliant and graduated from high school and university with excellent grades, better than those of men, they are always below men, and have no social status … From a societal perspective, men are superior in all aspects of society. Also, when women get married, they automatically lose their jobs and spend their lives as housewives. However, when I looked at my mum’s case, in fact, women (housewives) don’t have comfortable free time for themselves. Getting up at 5 am, even before preparing breakfast for their families, they have to clean the streets and yards, and after sending their husbands and children to work and school, they have to do painting or clean the village, or go to an agricultural village to perform their agricultural duties and many other tasks, so they do tens of times more than men who work in the factories. But the daily food ration allocated to them is only 300g, the same as kindergarten children. Because the living conditions for women are so bad, especially when they get pregnant, there are many cases of women having anaemia and they experience many other illnesses; they get many female diseases after childbirth because they can’t eat properly.’ This quote highlights the many burdens borne by North Korean women: the loss of their employment status as a consequence of marriage and the unending heavy workloads expected of housewives. Numerous scholars have suggested that the process of re-​traditionalization took place in the DPRK between the early 1980s and mid-​1990s by forcing women to return to the domestic sphere after marriage as the economy slowed down, in contrast to the previous period between 1958 and 1982, which was characterized by the mobilization of the female labour force to address labour shortages (Lee, 70

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2005; Jung and Dalton, 2006; Kang, 2008; Park, 2011). For example, Park (1992–​93) notes a decline in married women’s labour-​market participation since the late 1980s, especially among those who marry high earners. A similar observation is made by Jung and Dalton (2006), who state that a full-​time ‘housewifisation’ of married women occurred between 1983 and 1995, owing to the stagnating economy and the increasing numbers of official pronouncements that emphasized women’s traditional role. In tune with Ms A’s account, Lankov and Kim (2014) point out that the daily ration for which housewives were eligible was 300 grams of grain, less than half of the 700 grams to which employed women were entitled. This indicates the lower social status granted to housewives, especially compared to employed women, even though they had to perform heavy workloads imposed by the state. This also raises issues around women’s healthcare and the impact of a poor diet, especially on those who are pregnant, as noted by Ms A. Related health concerns affecting females have also been raised by UNICEF (2006) and Lee et al (2018), as will be discussed later. Moreover, there is significant occupational segregation and gender pay gaps, despite the establishment of equal employment and pay law in 1972 (Kim, 2014). As noted by Kim, women are predominantly employed in low-​skilled and low-​paid jobs in light industries and the service sector. Consonant with the unequal gender structure in both the domestic and economic spheres, violations of female human rights are found to be rampant in the DRPK, including widespread incidents of domestic violence and verbal abuse. A White Paper by the Korea Institute for National Unification (Do et al, 2016) states that domestic violence is common and that changing economic roles between the genders since the economic collapse have contributed to its rise. According to this report, there are no legal provisions stipulating penalties for domestic violence in North Korea, even though a provision for prohibiting domestic violence is included in Article 46 of the Law for the Protection of Women’s Rights. Ms C’s narrative also suggests that appropriate protection and support are not provided by the state, and that there is no recourse to justice or legal protection: ‘In North Korea, the idea that men are superior to women is so prevalent that women are always beaten by their husbands. Even if we don’t have anything to eat, we have to serve alcohol to our husbands. I was also beaten by my husband for 25 years. We have to put up with it.’ This persistent injustice towards women is caused by the prevalent perception of domestic violence as a family matter (Gooptar, 2017). Ms C’s relief when her husband died is a clear indication of this lack of redress in practice, as it was the only way to stop his lifelong abuse. This excerpt also reveals compounding hardships placed on women since the economic crisis of the 71

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mid-​1990s: women are expected to continue to meet the demands of their husbands while also struggling to feed their families. Some scholars have suggested that the power of women has become elevated and that there have been shifts in gendered roles within the family as a result of women’s increased participation in the shadow economy and their rise as major breadwinners (Kang, 2008; Schwekendiek and Mercier, 2016). However, such improvements in women’s positions and men’s contribution to domestic tasks have not altered the established gender order, in which men are still considered to be the head of the household. Moreover, the minor degree of elevation of women’s position in the domestic sphere since the marketization from below (Haggard and Nolan, 2012) has been undermined by wife-​beating by frustrated husbands who have lost their position as breadwinner (Park, 2011; Schwekendiek and Mercier, 2016). Additionally, Park (2011) argues that women’s workloads, both inside and outside the private realm, have increased substantially since the changes in female economic roles, as they have taken on a double burden. The hardship that women have had to endure since the famine was also confirmed by both my male and female interviewees. For instance, Mr S expressed the view that women suffered most hardships after the economic collapse as they utilized their resourcefulness to feed their families, while men did not know what to do. Consequently, ‘women called men a house guard dog’, which implies their ‘empty’ figurehead status while making no real financial contribution. In a similar fashion, the abrogation of the patrilineal system, despite its appearance as a gender-​emancipatory step, has created ‘a new form of women’s oppression by transforming women into the bearers of multiple burdens as producer, reproducer, and child-​ rearer’ (Ryang, 2000, p 343). As claimed by Hosaniak (2013), the regime has reinforced the traditional role of women through ideological education to bear more children, without protecting women’s rights to choose or providing education about contraception. Additionally, women and gender politics have been utilized during the Kim Jong Un era to establish women’s dual role as workers advancing the socialist economy and mothers who nurture their children into ‘obedient’ subjects (Cho et al, 2020). On top of this dual burden, the current regime mobilizes women to fill the state shortfalls of welfare provision by praising their maternal instincts and sacrifices, so that they take responsibility for caring for the vulnerable in society (Cho et al, 2020). Furthermore, there has been a rise in violence against women by third parties, as women travel around the country to source goods to sell in the markets, and the emergence of ‘chance assault’ by male officials and border guards demanding sexual favours from women who cannot afford fines for minor offences resulting from their illegal economic activities, or when they are repatriated from China (Park, 2011). This observation is supported by 72

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a KINU report (Cho et al, 2013), which highlights that sexual harassment is widespread, and sex is regularly demanded in return for privileges such as party membership. This kind of sexual violence pervades North Korea, including inside the military (Cho et al, 2013; Gooptar, 2017). A verdict from Ms B illustrates rampant sexual harassment and the common use of threats by senior officials in the army to block young women from joining the Party, which is a vital pathway to a secure and successful future: ‘When you’re about to join the Party, if a senior member demands [sex], with the threat: “if you refuse, you can’t be a party member forever”, then what do you do? So, you’re absolutely forced to comply. Then if a woman gets pregnant as a result, men aren’t punished. Women are blamed for their misbehaviour and get kicked out of the military. Other women also blame women and not men. The total military service is seven years, but even if a woman has only served one year, they force her out. And her future gets ruined as it remains in the official record. Consequently, many pregnant women use all sorts of dangerous methods to abort. Tightening their stomach with an army belt to hide their growing stomach, taking anthelmintic medicine, jumping off a mountainside and rolling down it. People see a foetus in the toilet once or twice a year.’ In agreement with Ms B’s narrative, research by Yang (2018, p 231) confirms that the prosecution of male perpetrators in this situation is rare, and that female victims who are found to be pregnant are forced out of the military, which is referred to as ‘release due to living (Sang-​hyual jae-​dae)’, meaning ‘forced release’. In this case, not only are expelled female soldiers not entitled to any compensation, but they also become stigmatized due to their ‘dishonourable misconduct’ as well as losing the lifetime opportunity to gain Party membership. Additionally, it is widely reported that sexual violence against women has been increasing in North Korea since the onset of the food crisis in the 1990s (Lim, 2005). Resonating with the rise in domestic violence stated previously, Kalra and Bhugra (2013) suggest that improvements in women’s social and economic positions may result in the rise of sexual violence against them due to a male backlash against their own diminished power and social positions. Even though legislation stipulating punishment for sexual offences exists in North Korea’s Criminal Law, defector testimonies indicate a significant problem in protecting women against such offences (Gooptar, 2017), as exemplified by Ms B’s account. In parallel with this, the existence of sexual harassment is not officially acknowledged in the DPRK (Lim, 2005). This inaction in implementing appropriate measures to protect women who have been unjustly exploited by men forces many women to depend 73

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on unsafe methods of pregnancy termination, putting their health and safety in danger. Phipps (2020, p 10) eloquently argues that ‘acts, threats and allegations of sexual violence are all tools of oppression. Sexual violence is terror; so is the way it is tackled and policed.’ As argued by Walby (1989) in her theorization of patriarchy, male violence is structural, despite its frequent appearance as random individual acts. Thus, the absence of state intervention to put an end to male violence structurally enables men to use such violence as a resource to dominate women (Walby, 1989). In such an environment, misogyny and the degrading treatment of women become a natural part of social life. Normalization justifies the perpetrators’ behaviour, while minimizing the consequences to the victims and disempowering them (Sinko et al, 2021). Consequently, gendered violence is perpetuated through the culture of victim blaming, in which women themselves become complicit. As Taylor (2020) maintains, the gendered structure and patriarchal culture therefore encourage women to blame other women. The normalization of hierarchical gender relations further prevents women from recognizing their reality as part of structural oppression: Ms B: ‘Something like sexual harassment is so prevalent that women don’t care about it. Look at South Korea. If a man stares at a particular part of a woman’s body on the underground, it’s called sexual harassment. We [North Korean female defectors] laugh at it. We still don’t understand it. We say how is just staring sexual harassment? We think that South Korean women are overreacting. We pity South Korean men … This means that we lived in North Korea without knowing that such behaviour by men comes from a complete disrespect for women.’ This elucidates that the perpetuation of sexual violence is maintained through the controlling mechanism of the numbing or eradication of individuals’ ability to think critically. As pointed out by Kalra and Bhugra (2013), a cause of sexual violence lies in the prevalence of a misogynistic attitude, and a culture that blames women constructs misconceptions of sexual violence as being caused by the ways in which some women act or dress, rather than attributing responsibility to male perpetrators. Alongside the violations of women’s human rights through sexual violence, their rights are infringed by the neglect of women’s hygiene issues, with no appropriate sanitary towels or tampons available to them, as noted by Ms B: ‘Female soldiers get wound dressings once a year, something like four for their period. Then, during our period we have to wash the dressings diligently, to dry and reuse them as we don’t have many to spare. But 74

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if you have military training all day, you don’t have time to change them … So female soldiers get lots of female hygiene-​related diseases.’ According to Ms B, this issue is worse for civilian women, who must make do with used male vests or socks, indicating a prevailing systemic disregard for female-​specific needs in the DPRK, founded on a male-​dominated standpoint. This was supported by Ms D, who was repatriated and imprisoned in a North Korean prison: ‘For women, there are no sanitary towels. When I was imprisoned, I tore my underwear and made four pads, and used them by washing and drying them in turn. There is no room for talking about hygiene.’ This male-​centred perspective is arguably accentuated by the high degree of militarization in North Korea (Halliday, 1985; Park, 2010), which has the fourth largest army in the world and altogether more than 1.2 million military personnel (Clemens Jr, 2016; Albert, 2020). The male-​centred operational system that neglects female soldiers’ basic needs potentially jeopardizes female health. A report by the UN Commission on Human Rights in the DPRK (2005) also finds that women, who are among the most vulnerable groups, are disadvantaged in their access to healthcare services and medicine (Hosaniak, 2013). DPRK law stipulates the state provision of comprehensive and free healthcare, and the regime is highly critical of the capitalist medical system for exploiting patients to make profit. Since Kim Jong Un came to power, he has sought to rebuild the health system, debilitated since the 1990s, through the modernization of hospitals, the production of medical equipment and drugs, and the introduction of advanced science and technology (Lee et al, 2018). According to statistics produced by an international organization in collaboration with the North Korean government, the DPRK appears to provide effective antenatal and postpartum care. For instance, the 2017 DPRK Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) carried out by the Central Bureau of Statistics of the DPRK and UNICEF (2018) found that 99.5 per cent of women who gave birth in the two years before the survey had undergone a prenatal check-​up at least once. Also, 99.5 per cent of the survey participants answered that they had received delivery care from competent health workers, such as doctors, nurses or midwives. However, given that UNICEF did not conduct the survey independently, the validity of such data is highly questionable because it raises doubts as to how the participants were recruited, and more specifically whether there was any implicit government pressure to provide answers that did not reflect their real-​life experiences. In addition, even though the report states that ethical protocols were followed regarding confidentiality and anonymity, it is arguable that the pervasiveness of total state control and terror –​and the fear of potential repercussions –​was likely to have influenced the participants’ 75

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responses to the survey. Not surprisingly, Lee et al’s (2018) study, involving interviews with defectors settled in South Korea, reports views that contrast with official statistics. Their report states that many interviewees said they received no antenatal check-​ups. My data also supports this lack of secure medical provision by the state, as exemplified by Ms D’s narrative: ‘In North Korea people carry out abortions at home by bringing in a private doctor. There is nothing in the hospital. If I needed to undergo a knee operation, I would have to pay for everything, wound dressings, injections, any medicine, costs for the doctor’s treatment and fees for the operation. Therefore, it would not be possible. These days people don’t go to the hospital and instead they get to know one doctor, give some bribes to that doctor, and ask that doctor to treat them at home.’ Lee et al’s report (2018) similarly states that, in reality, most doctors accept cash or other forms of compensation, such as gifts, thus violating the principle of free healthcare. They do so because they are struggling to earn enough to get by and to fulfil their duties without additional financial support through informal economic activities. As a consequence, the provision of money or goods to doctors by patients in return for a medical certificate is common practice. Due to shortages of supplies, most hospitals cannot provide adequate medical services. As a result, the use of private sellers and unofficial pharmacies has become widely prevalent (Lee et al, 2018). Issues with the availability of medical equipment and medication to the masses affect women and young girls particularly in relation to maternal mortality, reproductive health and female diseases. Lack of access to services and their low quality remain the biggest causes of morbidity and mortality among women in the DPRK (UNICEF, 2006). Moreover, according to the State of World Population 2018 published by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA, 2018), 75 per cent of women in the DPRK use birth control. However, there are no legal provisions for abortions, and family planning provision has been suspended since the economic crisis (Kim et al, 2011). The state bans abortions due to falling fertility rates, and women are not provided with appropriate education on contraception (Kim et al, 2011; Hosaniak, 2013; Lee et al, 2018). Despite the regime’s attempt to prevent abortions, there have been rising cases and many women have illegal abortions after failed attempts at birth control. The inadequacy of medical services and facilities forces women to undergo the procedures in dangerous and unhygienic conditions, as illustrated by Ms D’s account. Consonant with this, Lee et al (2018) also found that more abortions are performed by unofficial doctors than by official ones, in unsafe conditions in illegal private clinics. Hence, as 76

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suggested by Kim et al (2011), reproductive healthcare services in the DPRK are inadequate, resulting in high-​r isk conditions such as the use of unregulated contraceptive products purchased on the black market, together with insufficient provision of antenatal and postpartum care. A more recent report by Robinson (2019) indicates that maternal healthcare remains an area of recuperation from dramatic decline in the 1990s, notwithstanding an improvement in the maternal mortality rate between 2000 and 2015, with the help of international organizations, such as the WHO and UNICEF. Furthermore, COVID-​19 restrictions have had a negative impact on public health through the depletion of sexual and reproductive health supplies from the UN Populations Fund, along with insufficient investment in medical equipment and staff (Quintana, 2022). In summary, the gender structure and gendered practices have remained largely unchanged under the rule of Kim Jong Un, despite some indications of improvement and changes in some areas, reflecting no real shift in the regime through the reiteration of old narratives in a revised form (Cathcart, 2017; Denney et al, 2017). There is no sign of any immediate changes in deeply gender-​segregated ideologies and realities in the DPRK.

Human rights abuses outside North Korea Gendered issues and sexual violence facing North Korean women continue to shape their experiences outside the DPRK, during the process of escaping and following their border-​crossing to China. Gendered violence against North Korean women has some overlapping characteristics with the experiences of forced female migrants from such countries as Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea and Syria, who flee to European countries. For instance, similarly to North Korean female border-​crossers to China, these groups experience sexual violence during their journeys from smugglers or traffickers, and in their destination countries or in detention centres without recourse to protection (UN Women, 2017). The precarious and illegal status of these women makes their situation even more vulnerable; a situation that can include domestic violence from their male partners due to fear of deportation (Freeman and Jamal, 2008). There are also some commonalities between violence against North Korean women defectors and violence inflicted on ‘comfort women’ by Japanese soldiers and medics between 1937 and 1945, such as deception as a primary form of recruitment, the ways in which women were treated by men and the lifelong impact of violence on these female subjects (Tongsuthi, 1994; Min, 2003). However, ‘comfort women’ had distinctive features rooted in the specific historical context of Japanese colonization of the Korean peninsula and neighbouring regions, together with the distinct purposes the victims were exploited to serve. 77

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In a similar vein, gendered violence experienced by North Korean women arguably has unique characteristics that distinguishes them from other groups. This stems from intersectional factors pertaining to the historical, political, economic and cultural milieux in the DPRK and China. While deception was the main form of recruitment for ‘comfort women’, voluntary movements have also been common among North Korean border-​crossers through their reliance on smugglers (Choi, 2014; Kook, 2018). Additionally, the DPRK government’s failure to provide basic food security for its people since the collapse of the economy has driven the exodus of a large number of North Koreans to China as a survival strategy (Charny, 2004; Lankov, 2004; CRS, 2007; Chang et al, 2008; Fahy, 2019). Drawing on Sassen’s notion of expulsion (2014), it can be argued that the concentration of wealth among the Kim family and the elite, accumulated through illicit methods, including the Royal Court Economy, together with the lack of appropriate provision of basic security, have expelled ordinary North Korean people from their country. Fahy (2012) argues that, to free the government from being implicated in the causes of famine, the regime deployed the deceitful discursive tactic of restricting people from talking about food shortages and by naming the 1990s economic crisis as ‘The March of Suffering’. Through this, the regime removed ‘hunger, famine, starvation’ from everyday discourse and reinforced the silencing of any discussion of the famine by using threats and violence (Fahy, 2012, p 549). During this intense period of hunger and expulsion, it was mainly women who were able to escape the country due to their housewife status and consequent relative invisibility within state employment under its patriarchal structure, which enabled them to evade the official system (Park, 2011; Haggard and Noland, 2012; Lankov and Kim, 2014). Moreover, the demand for North Korean brides –​in combination with their vulnerable position –​has led to high rates of ‘forced’ marriage, which is the most common form of trafficking involving North Korean women in China (Robinson, 2019). The narrative of Ms D supports this: ‘When I left North Korea for the first time, it was during the period of the March of Suffering and many people died of hunger. Everybody had a hard life. I also struggled and went to China with a sister from the same village to do trading, but we couldn’t get back because we were caught by the human traffickers. For North Korean women, when they go to China, one way to survive is marriage. This kind of story is true not only in my own case, but also for about 80–​90 per cent of North Korean women. When we went to China, we didn’t know the language, or writing or anything, so in order to survive, we didn’t have a choice. In the end I was sold … But at that time I didn’t even know I’d been sold. I went to this Chinese home, I didn’t know 78

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the language and I was only 25 at that time and I lived continuously crying because I also missed my mum. I tried to escape but didn’t know the directions and words, so I couldn’t get out. They told me they’d bought me for 6,000 won.’ The research of Kim et al (2009), using telephone interviews with trafficked North Korean women from shelters and safe houses in China and Thailand, identified that the primary method used by traffickers to recruit these women was deception, with mendacious promises of helping them to find secure employment or good marriages. Their research also discovered that traffickers used forced kidnapping or voluntary consent due to deception –​selling the women either into marriage or the sex industry, such as to karaoke bars and brothels. The treatment of North Koreans by the Chinese government as illegal economic migrants, in conjunction with their desperate need for survival, drive many women into extremely vulnerable positions with little power to control their situation (Charny, 2005), as illustrated by Ms A. When she crossed into China, she was helped by a Chinese family near the border, but then they introduced her to their friend, who turned out to be a trafficker: ‘After listening to my father’s dying wish to save my brother [he was a wanted man due to his escape from the army after failing to earn foreign currency for the ‘loyal funds’ (Choongsung jageum) that he was obliged to submit to the government; this rendered him and his teammates political criminals, and they all ran away], I went to China. I believed that if I went to China, I could save my brother. But when we went to China, I was trafficked and separated from my brother, and after one year, my brother was repatriated to the North. It’s been 17 years since he was repatriated. I still don’t know whether he’s alive or dead … The friend of the person who housed me told me that, if I wanted to save my brother, I needed money. I said I was prepared to do any job, it’s OK to work in a restaurant or teach children, I was thinking like in North Korea [she used to be a schoolteacher]. But that person said he knew a quick way to earn lots of money. I said I was willing to do anything for my brother and he told me to marry a Chinese man. When I heard this for the first time, I objected. I’d lived in North Korea for 30 years and I’d never imagined getting married to a foreigner. When I said no, he said “I can’t take responsibility for your family, whether your brother or you get repatriated, it’s up to you.” And I got scared. If we were repatriated, I could be released after a few years of labour, but it was completely different for my brother because he was a wanted man. So I reluctantly agreed to get married, also because I thought of my father’s last wish and I just thought that 79

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marriage would involve spending money that a husband earned and raising children. I hadn’t heard the words ‘human trafficking’ at that time. Before I was sold, many people came to see me. There were about five North Korea women. The price differed depending on our age and the people who came to see us were a wide range of disabled, old, divorced men. I was sold for 5,000 won and I believed I could save my brother with that money, but the broker took all the money and disconnected me from my brother.’ The vulnerable situation of North Korean women provides a breeding ground for their exploitation by human traffickers. Under DPRK law, defection, attempting to defect, or helping others to defect constitute serious crimes (Muico, 2005; Fahy, 2019). This criminalization of anyone who escapes the North without government permission exposes them to potentially extremely dangerous situations, with few options available to them. Although some women ‘proactively and voluntarily’ seek marriage to Chinese men as a survival tactic, many women are forced into such a dire situation through deception and threats. As exemplified in Ms A’s story, the false hope of earning lots of money quickly, saving her brother’s life and getting married to a ‘decent’ man never materialized. In fact, Ms A was sold to a gambler in the countryside and was impregnated. She was forced to work in the fields until the last day of her pregnancy without proper food. After their child was born, the man tried to sell the infant to raise money to pay off his gambling debts. This dehumanizing treatment of North Korean women as ‘disposable commodities’ is astutely described by Ms A: ‘When Chinese people buy trafficked women, they don’t think of them as part of their family, but as objects. When they need us, they use us, and when we’re not needed, they sell us, sell us to other people. Also, women are a labour force and once they get sold, they have to work from morning till evening … In the village where I was sold, there were five North Korean women. When we walked past each other, we couldn’t talk because the family who bought us didn’t let us interact because they feared we might escape. We couldn’t hold hands even once or share a single word. They monitored us together and the village people told us that, if we escaped, they would catch us, rape us or kill us or report us to the police, and because we were illegal migrants, nobody would blame them; only we would get punished. Of these five women, I didn’t see one person at all, and I heard that she was left at home completely naked. Two men bought her because, if one person bought her, it was burdensome so the two bought her together. They imprisoned her in the house and took turns to rape her and they also beat her. For the sole reason of having been born 80

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in North Korea, we were maltreated, we were like lives corralled on the cliff edge.’ Stories of how villagers were turned into pseudo prison guards were common, together with ‘chain sale’, through which women were sold several times to different men, as described by Ms A. This is in line with what Yuval-​Davis et al (2019) define as ‘everyday bordering’ through the expansion of monitoring and the reporting of ‘suspicious’ immigrants by the public. In this sense, policing penetrates the everyday practices of ‘ordinary’ Chinese citizens who have been inculcated by the Chinese state to become suspicious and vigilant watchers through sanctions and financial rewards. Alongside the abovementioned ‘chain sale’, some women are re-​trafficked after being targeted by criminal gangs who abduct women and sell them to the sex industry if they have escaped from their buyers and attempted to hide somewhere in China (Kim et al, 2009). In accordance with Ms A’s narrative, trafficked women –​in a study by Robinson (2019) –​were seven times more likely than non-​trafficked women to have experienced forced sex in China, and were more likely than non-​trafficked women to have experienced some form of intimate partner violence and verbal abuse. In this respect, the word ‘marriage’ seems rather inappropriate to describe the reality of many North Korean women, when in practice their so-​called husbands and their families act as ‘captors and masters’, built on entirely exploitative relationships. As sagaciously expressed by Garcia (2019, p 68), ‘once their bodies are treated as commodities and objects to trade with, their humanity fades’, leaving them in a state of ‘bare life’ (Agamben, 1998). Not surprisingly, North Korean refugees in China suffer psychological stress akin to post-​traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), due to their pre-​ migration trauma plus post-​migration precariousness (Chang et al, 2008; Herrman et al, 2010). As Ms D explained: ‘We had to run straight away if they came to catch us, even during our sleep, so we always made a hole at the back to quickly escape. When I talked to people in the prison, some people who lived in the city made underground places so they could hide if the police came to catch them. So, even if we were in China, we couldn’t relax because we didn’t know when we were going to be caught or when they were going to come to catch us. There was a certain period of intense raids when the Chinese caught people like us. We had to be extremely careful during this period, even moving a single step, and we used to hide a lot in deep and dark places … When we lived in China, if we went out to town to buy something, when a police car passed sounding its siren we got frightened and bent our backs, pretending to tie our shoelaces. We always felt as if we were guilty and they were going to 81

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catch us. It’s terrible to think about it even now … I met my husband in China and had my daughter, so I say I have forgotten a lot about what happened in China, but strangely, I get chased in my dreams. During the national holidays, sometimes they [the Chinese police] are going to catch me, so I jump into water or hide in the mountains, as happened in China, even though I think I’ve forgotten most of it. Because we lived like this, I still hate to hear the police siren here.’ My research suggests that similar issues are faced by both male and female defectors as a result of traumatic experiences during their lives in China; for instance, intense palpitations every time they hear police cars. However, some empirical evidence is indicative of women being more vulnerable to psychological distress than men, having experienced greater anxiety and fear for other family members than men (Chang et al, 2008). Unsurprisingly, forced migrants experience long-​term health repercussions from constantly living in precarious situations with the ongoing threat of detention and deportation (Yuval-​Davis et al, 2019). The narratives of my participants echo these findings, with their continuing experiences of nightmares and fear, as exemplified by Ms D. The pain caused by such experiences does not disappear even after finding a secure life: Ms D: ‘If I think about my past, it hurts my self-​esteem. Even though I didn’t have much choice, I don’t want to remember such unpleasant things … It’s a secret that I have to bury and carry in my mind, so I don’t talk about what happened in China in detail because, if I do, it just hurts my heart.’ As described in this account, many women live with the pain without being able to talk about it openly, even with their partners, even after they have managed to escape from repressive regimes and circumstances to free countries like the UK. On the other hand, some scholars have critiqued the dominant discourse on human trafficking and smuggling, based as it is on powerless female victims with no agency (Sharma, 2005; Sanchez, 2016, 2018; Zhang et al, 2018). In particular, they take issue with its blanket approach towards North Korean trafficking as ‘forced’ (Choi, 2014; Kook, 2018). As noted above, some women voluntarily seek marriage to Chinese men as a strategic move to go to China and earn money, while also becoming involved in trafficking as helpers or facilitators. The story of Ms B, who was a soldier in the DPRK, exemplifies these. She initially travelled to China with her father and younger brother to earn money to tackle the ongoing hunger that affected her whole family. However, they were twice caught by the Chinese police and sent back to the DPRK. Luckily, the head of the prison turned out to be the father 82

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of a subordinate whom she had treated kindly when she was in the army, so thanks to his help they were released from their second imprisonment: ‘When we were released, even more anger [against the regime] was left and we felt we couldn’t live in North Korea any more, so we crossed the border again. But we had to change our tactics and I said to my father that “if three of us move together, we constantly get caught and if we get caught for a third time, it’s too dangerous, so sell me to a Chinese man, and using that money, you and my younger brother take my mother and sister somewhere safe. I’ll do it.” My father cried saying “it’s nonsense that parents sell their own child.” “Don’t think you’re selling me but think, ah, our daughter has gone somewhere and is living well.” So, I talked to the owner of the house where we were staying about buying me and he said we could get 5,000 won and I said yes and asked him to give me that money quickly. They asked whether my father agreed and I almost pushed him to agree, then I sent my father back to North Korea with the money.’ Choi (2014) draws on her interviews with North Korean women who were trafficked to China to challenge a totalizing approach towards North Korean human trafficking, on the grounds of the Western liberal notions of universal human rights. Choi argues that such a hegemonic Western discourse disregards the complicated structural economic and geopolitical conditions faced by North Korean women, who rely on border-​crossing for survival. In addition, trafficked North Korean women are uniformly framed as powerless victims who need to be rescued by developed Western countries. However, according to Choi (2014, p 273), ‘North Korean women’s own narratives about migration challenge the discourses and policies that cement their subaltern status as powerless victims.’ At the same time, the national and international interventions built on these premises that have been adopted do not benefit North Korean women; instead, they have a negative effect on the women because they lead to tighter border controls and the resulting higher broker fees, as well as forcing them to go further underground (Choi, 2014). In a similar vein, based on a qualitative study of North Korean women who escaped to China, Kook (2018) highlights the complexity of North Korean women’s migration to China and points out the futility of an either/​ or dichotomous approach in unpacking their experiences. Most of her interviewees commenced contact with smugglers directly, and all of them went to China ‘voluntarily’ with the assistance of informal border smugglers. This illuminates the complex and symbiotic relationships between migrants and smugglers when safe, legal channels of migration are not available. As Zhang et al (2018) argue, illegal migrants deploy smuggling as a means of 83

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alleviating the uncertainty and danger inherent in their illicit journeys in order to build security from below. In this sense, their voluntary actions become an enabler for tackling precarious and unjust circumstances, notwithstanding the limitations, and potentially improve the (future) lives of some women and their families, as exemplified by the story of Ms B. Therefore, some women proactively seek marriage with the help of smugglers as a channel to migrate to China in the pursuit of greater economic and financial opportunities. This can also be viewed as an attempt to claim ownership of their own lives and destinies by taking the initiative in navigating their constraining environment to overcome the poverty and dead-​end situations they face in the DPRK. This agency, and their endeavour to take such ownership, are vital catalysts for their survival throughout their journey. From the critical perspective of De Hass (2009, p 11), ‘the sharp distinction between forced and voluntary migration is primarily a policy and legal distinction driven by the interest of states in classifying migrants’. In addition to this, the distinction between ‘forced’ and ‘voluntary’ migration is not clearcut for North Koreans in China, and there is an overlap between trafficking and smuggling (Kook, 2018). This is also consistent with the pivotal argument against the dominant anti-​trafficking discourse presented by Sharma (2005), who criticizes the way in which it diverts attention from the punitive laws that prevent safe and secure channels of mobility for women by drawing attention to the secretive processes of migration. Sharma maintains that anti-​trafficking interventions within the global North for the sake of rescuing trafficked victims have legitimated harsher border controls by repressive states. Hence, what victimizes these women is not trafficking or smuggling per se, but the global migration policies that prioritize national and international security over the routine practice of female oppression and exploitation, based on oppressive ideologies (Sharma, 2005). Kotef (2015) traces the history of liberalism as a regime of movement in which unequal mobility rights play out differently among divergent groups. Control over movement has been a central feature of different governments seeking to establish their political orders and to form divergent subject positions within their territories. In their conceptual framework, which they call ‘regimes of mobility’, Schiller and Salazar (2014) draw our attention to the unequal abilities, processes and outcomes of individual (im)mobility, shaped by various nation-​states and global regulatory administrations, as well as to the new modes of exploitation, oppression and confinement experienced by certain groups of mobile subjects, as exemplified by North Korean women border-​crossers. However, at the same time, the views of my participants are not consistent with the arguments presented by Choi and Kook in terms of ‘voluntarism’ and victimhood. My participants have an acute understanding of the limited options open to North Korean women and the prevalence of the abuse they 84

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experience in China, as discussed in Chapter 2. In agreement with this, I stress that it is vital not to overlook the impact of human trafficking and smuggling on the lives of North Korean women, while critically recognizing the aggravating impact of criminalizing border controls by the DPRK and China. I additionally propose that the experiences of North Korean women demand the careful unpacking of the structural forces that directly influence these women’s decision to go to China, and the abuse to which they are subjected during and after their move. In this further unpacking, the concept of ‘embedded agency’ proposed by Korteweg (2008) can be instrumental. In her analysis of the Sharia debate over arbitration in family disputes in Canada, Korteweg differentiates ‘embedded agency’ from agency based on the notion of liberal ideas that challenge dominant forces (in her case Islam and Sharia law). In contrast to the latter, ‘embedded agency’ is exercised within intersecting ‘historic cultural, social and economic contexts’, involving factors such as religion and gender (Korteweg, 2008, p 437). Thus, agency is seen as embedded in social forces, rather than being construed as the practice of ‘free will’ and ‘free choice’. Korteweg argues that the application of ‘embedded agency’ in disentangling ethnic minority women’s experiences can reveal more nuanced approaches taken by women, and guards against racialization through treating them as homogeneous subjects. Using Korteweg’s concept, it is also possible to unpack the narratives of North Korean female mobility to China. As illustrated in the interview data gathered from Ms A and Ms B, they had a certain degree of choice. However, it is crucial to understand the social forces that directly influenced their ‘choice’ and decision-​making at that particular juncture. Going back to Ms A’s previous narrative, while it was she who eventually consented to her marriage to a Chinese man, there is clear evidence of deception, threat and coercion: false promises of ‘making lots of money quickly’; of being able to ‘save her brother’s life’; implying that her refusal would result in their repatriation and her brother’s inevitable fate in the DPRK. A number of political, economic and cultural factors compelled Ms A to choose the marriage. Firstly, the dire economic situation in the DPRK, where the state had failed to provide minimum food security to its people, forced Ms A to leave the country illegally. This was combined with her attempt to save her brother, who became a criminal without any ‘genuine’ conviction. Secondly, the political structure of North Korea and China, both of which criminalize North Korean border-​crossers as illegal economic migrants, pushed her into an extremely vulnerable position in which she had very limited options. As discussed in the last chapter, during our interviews some of my participants compared their lives with mine and expressed regret at having been born in the DPRK, and not in another country, which was a clear sign that these choices were unwanted ones. Thirdly, the 85

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dominant cultural forces of Confucianism,4 which strongly support filial piety undoubtedly also affected her decision, as evidenced in her endeavour to realize her father’s dying wish. These embedded structural factors were salient in shaping her experiences. The situation was similar in the case of Ms B. Although she volunteered herself to be sold, the circumstances in which her family found itself had limited their options for safety and survival. It was acute poverty, the need for survival and the oppressive and restrictive border controls that ‘forced’ Ms B to take the drastic action of putting herself forward so as not to endanger the lives of her whole family. If no restrictions on border-​crossings between the DPRK and China had been imposed, women like Ms B would not be compelled to sell themselves because legal and safe routes to China would be available. In Ms B’s situation, volunteering herself for marriage seemed to be the ‘best’ option her family had. Additionally, her ‘voluntary’ action for the sake of her family, following market demands, indicates the dominant power not only of the Confucian patriarchal culture but also the underlying logic of capitalism that routinely exploits women’s labour (Chang, 2010), which pervades North Korea under the pretence of the official state-​led economy (  Joo, 2010). Consonant with Korteweg’s (2008) notion of ‘embedded agency’, Smart and Shipman (2004) critically question the concept of ‘choice’. In lieu of a ‘free’ and ‘individual’ choice, which discounts the social contexts in which such a choice is made, Smart and Shipman propose contextual or relational choice, which highlights the structural and social forces that influence individuals’ decision-​making. Hence, it is vital to understand the social, cultural, economic and political milieu which steered these women to make such choices, albeit they appeared to be ‘voluntary’, with the potential to transform their existing circumstances.

Human rights abuses during and after repatriation Sadly, North Korean women’s ordeals do not end when they leave their own country and cross over into China to seek opportunities to forge a better life or save their families struggling with poverty. China does not recognize North Koreans as refugees but regards them as illegal economic migrants (Eom and Kim, 2016), and repatriates them on the basis of a 1986 bilateral agreement with the DPRK (CRS, 2007). Reflecting this, my interviews with both male and female defectors suggest that it was common for many of them to have been caught and deported back to the North a number of times. Although escaping the DPRK is legally stipulated as treason against the fatherland and the people, treatment upon repatriation is reported to vary depending on several factors: for example, relative leniency towards those who have gone to China for economic reasons, rather than political reasons (Charny, 2004; CRS, 2007). 86

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Plsek (2015) similarly disputes many claims of the uniformly harsh treatment applied to those who have escaped the country, arguing that Pyongyang’s punishments for escape are highly flexible, depending on several different components, including age, gender and motive for escape, alongside family background and former status or profession. My interview data also supports this argument to a certain extent, with some participants suggesting that the lenient treatments they received were a result of their informal connections with officials or the bribes their families provided. Nonetheless, it is evident from defector testimonies that this flexibility does not lead to humane treatment for the majority of those captured, and repatriated North Koreans are liable to face arbitrary imprisonment, forced labour, torture or execution (Baek, 2016; Garcia, 2019). In line with this, some of my interviewees reported having lost family members to execution after they were caught during their escape. Hence, despite the highly precarious and dangerous realities, many women expressed their desire to stay in China, rather than being deported back to the DPRK, because at least they could eat in China; plus, they had a genuine dread of the inhumane treatment they would have to face upon repatriation (Muico, 2005). Given this harsh reality, the intense fear of deportation felt by escapees is to be expected, especially because their capture could also affect their family members (Chung, 2003). A desperate desire to avoid repatriation to the DPRK was also illustrated by Ms D, who made a number of dangerous bids with three other North Korean female prisoners to escape from the Chinese prison where they were being held, including a 20-​day hunger strike and attempts to cut her wrists, along with the other female inmates, using broken glass from a fluorescent light found in the toilet. When these attempts failed, they deployed a more extreme method: ‘The last thing we did was we cut our bra wire into pieces, two pieces per person, with the intention of swallowing them so that we would be taken to the hospital and could escape. You might think that if you put them in your throat, you could swallow them, but it never happened. In order to swallow them, we struggled for half a day … Then one of us said she had eaten it, so we asked how she did it and she said she pushed it hard and then swallowed saliva and it went down. So we all did it together. Then about two hours passed and our stomachs started to become painful … We knocked on the door and told the guards we had bad stomach aches and they asked what we had eaten, so we told them. The officers were very surprised … So we went to the hospital and the first hospital said we needed to be operated on as soon as possible because otherwise the metal would rust and it would cause inflammation and cause holes in the stomach. We were stupid to think that if they took us to the hospital, they would unshackle us. 87

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One guard was in charge of each of us and shackled us so we couldn’t escape. They took us to another hospital and took X-​rays. If they had to operate on us, they would have to use their money, so we were transferred to another hospital, but after measuring the length of the metals, the doctor in the hospital said that they were not that long; 7 or 8 cm was not long. To get stuck in the stomach, they needed to be at least 10 cm to create a hole in the stomach, and the doctor told the guards to give us lots of vegetables with fibre and feed us antiphlogistics [a remedy to reduce inflammation].’ Ms D’s narrative elucidates the extreme lengths to which some North Korean women are prepared to go in order not to be sent back to the DPRK, as they are clearly aware of the appalling treatment they would receive back ‘home’. The UN Human Rights Council’s report on the situation of human rights in the DPRK (UNHRC, 2019), based on defector testimonies in Seoul, highlights evidence of human rights violations at North Korean detention facilities and supports this widespread understanding of the maltreatment of repatriates. The narrative of Ms B illuminates that the treatment of those who are repatriated by state officials is far below humane level: ‘Once we’re repatriated to North Korea, we won’t receive humane treatment. Let alone human rights; we’re not human any more. When you cross the Chinese bridge, a few metres away from the Chinese flag, you can see the North Korean flag. From then on people start to think, “shall I jump from here and die, or shall I cross the border?” Those who’ve been caught a few times have experience, so they know what’s going to happen. Once we cross the border, they [the police] confiscate our brassieres and knickers to give them to their wives. Honestly, because there aren’t such things in North Korea. From the North Koreans’ perspective, those who have been to China, they’re from a foreign country. Because Chinese [foreign] products are of better quality than those in North Korea, they confiscate all men’s shoes, belts, jackets and they strip off women to find out whether they’re wearing anything valuable that can be seized and given to their wives.’ This opportunistic behaviour by the police and border guards can be seen as part of the broader state violence. As argued by Butler (2022), the concept of state violence should be expanded beyond physical violence, pain and injury, such as beatings and shootings. More importantly, violence should not be treated as a one-​off event ‘but a process or ongoing social condition embedded in our daily lives’ (Butler, 2022, p 24). In line with this, Farmer et al (2006, p 1986) describe structural violence as: 88

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Social structures –​economic, political, legal, religious, and cultural –​ that stop individuals, groups, and societies from reaching their full potential … Structural violence is often embedded in longstanding “ubiquitous social structures, normalized by stable institutions and regular experience.” Because they seem so ordinary in our ways of understanding the world, they appear almost invisible. Building on this, it is arguable that ordinary people’s lives in the DPRK are founded on structural violence. This insidious form of violence, so deeply entrenched in everyday lives, transforms into much more explicitly visible and injurious modes in dealing with those who are captured and imprisoned. As illustrated by the narratives of my participants and other defector testimonies, the degrading experiences of those who are repatriated are frequently described as losing their humanity, and being equated with animals. Arnold (2018, p 99) argues that the cause of moral horror –​what he describes as ‘the condition citizens live in given the unjustifiable violence of the state’ –​stems from the indiscernible differentiation between human and animal: ‘a distinction affirmed and denied in the very idea of a political animal’ in our everyday lives (p 108). The act of inflicting ‘illegitimate’ violence, or disregarding the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate violence, relegates the human being to an animal whose treatment is regarded as outside the domain of moral principles: What we learn from the persistent and prominent ‘animalisation’ of those against whom violence is committed is that once a human being is placed outside the realm of the human, either definitively or partially, the violence one does against that human/​animal no longer falls under the moral rules that regulate our violent acts against other humans. Legitimate violence is for humans, and against humans, alone. (Arnold, 2018, p 111) This kind of ‘animalization’ of people through the degrading behaviour of the officials extends to much more humiliating acts, particularly towards women and girls, as exemplified by Ms B, who was caught with her father and younger brother: ‘There should be an expectation that a woman should be searched by a female guard. However, a male guard ordered me to take my clothes off completely and even opened my anus to check whether we’d hidden money inside. They make people exercise to loosen the muscles of the body, so that any money inside comes out automatically. They made me do that exercise naked and how shameful it was doing it in front of men. My father and brother said they wanted to die at that moment.’ 89

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According to Yang (2018), Article 143 of North Korea’s Criminal Procedure Code stipulates that bodily strip-​searches are only allowed to garner evidence and the Law on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Women enacted in 2010 provides further protection for female detainees by banning illicit searches of their bodies. However, the Law does not clarify what ‘illegal search’ means; thus, a strip search of detainees is commonly practised in the DPRK, despite these laws (Yang, 2018). Kalra and Bhugra (2013, p 246) propose that sexual violence entails ‘elements of control, power, domination, and humiliation’. Ms B’s narrative is a prime example of the manifestation of these elements inflicted by the state apparatus. The narrative of Ms C echoes Ms B’s experiences: ‘Once you get repatriated to North Korea, you’re not a human but a dog from then on. At first we went to a Bowibu5 [Secret Police facility] in Moosan. From then on, they made us stand in line, tying our arms in case we ran away, and there were ten of us on one rope. They forced us to strip completely naked. When men ordered us to take our clothes off and repeatedly pointed guns at us, how could we not do it? Once we’d taken our clothes off, they searched everywhere, tore bras to find money. If it had ended there, how good that would be! But we had to bend over towards the wall, bend like animals with four legs towards the wall. Then, they opened our anuses and vaginas using the clothes we took off as covers for their hands. Then they beat our bum three times and, due to the shock, any money hidden inside the anus fell out … If women had long hair, they checked it to see whether money was hidden inside the hair. For them, money was the target. If they couldn’t find money, they didn’t let us go to the toilet and made us wee and poo in a bucket in front of them and two guards poured out the bucket in the field to find money wrapped inside vinyl. They picked it up, washed the money and gave it to the senior officials. Those guards had to find money to avoid being beaten. If they couldn’t find any money, the senior officials beat them, thinking they’d stolen the money … There’s something called pump; it’s a method to make the hidden money come out. You had to spread your legs at shoulder width and do sit-​ups 100 times naked. You couldn’t do it but they forced you with guns pointing at you. Once you’d done it 100 times, there was no strength left in your legs, so people collapsed. While collapsing, laughter and wee came out because all your muscles became loosened. Money came out as well as poo, and we had to clean it up. We had to give the money to the guards after cleaning it.’ Ms C’s account reveals the systemic oppression and exploitation in which not only prisoners suffer, but also junior prison guards become the ‘semi-​victims’ 90

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of structural abuse by senior officials. Reports by Hong (2019) and the UK’s Home Office (2016) suggest widespread corruption as well as the pervasive practice of bribery in North Korean society. What emerges from this narrative is an indication of the extent of the abuse and exploitation exerted by those in power in order to make money, overriding basic human dignity and the rights of fellow North Koreans. Paradoxically, given the communist ideology propagated by the state, capitalist ideology appears to have seeped deeply into the DPRK, where ‘money can buy or solve anything’ (Baek, 2016, p 63) and has become the most valued commodity, trumping everything else. Numerous government and academic reports have further highlighted forced abortions carried out on repatriated North Korean women who became pregnant in China (CRS, 2007; Chang et al, 2008; Home Office, 2016). Ms C’s narrative elucidates this: ‘There were pregnant women, and they had to stay in the Jipkyolso [an extrajudicial provincial-​level detention facility] until they delivered their babies. When they began contractions, there was not enough space to deliver the baby because about 100 people were sitting in a small room, so we all had to be pushed against the wall in two or three rows and watch the woman delivering the baby. We had to stand up until she delivered the baby, whether it took two days or three days. Once the babies had been delivered, the person who received them put them upside down next to the mothers because they had to die. Because they were not Korean men’s babies but Chinese, and spreading foreign seeds on North Korean soil was not allowed. The babies cried for three days and we were really going mad inside, getting stressed. There were no textiles to wrap the babies, so the mothers tore their winter underwear and wrapped them while crying and they died in three or four days because they were left lying upside down without any water or milk. These days when I hear cats cry, I get goose bumps because a baby’s cry sounds just like a cat’s and my teeth get itchy like crazy. Do you know where they put the dead babies? In the toilet. They left them standing along the toilet wall in a row. When I was in the prison, there were seven dead babies. The reason why they displayed them in the toilet was to teach us not to go to China and not to bring Chinese seeds inside our wombs, betraying our own country.’ This infanticide is driven by a racialized nationalist ideology that sees any baby with Chinese heritage as a marker of betrayal of the motherland (Charny, 2004, 2005; Chang et al, 2008; Home Office, 2016). As noted by Holliday (1985), sexism in Korean society pre-​dates the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula in 1910, as evidenced by the decapitation of Korean women who ‘consorted’ with Japanese men, a punishment not equally applied to 91

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Korean men. Drawing on the Mexican state’s responsibility for the deaths of ‘public women’ who were involved in prostitution, Wright (2011) sharply points out how the government played a significant role in leading these deaths by diverting the blame onto women themselves. Here, we can draw some parallels with the DPRK government in the way it treats women who become pregnant with the babies of Chinese men. Predicated on the work of Wright (2011), I would argue that, in countries like North Korea, necropolitics (power over the life and death of individuals) constitutes a critical facet of terror and is a crucial technique in controlling the population. Furthermore, the DPRK’s rejection of children with North Korean mothers and Chinese fathers has forced repatriated women to become separated from their children (Chang et al, 2008), while concurrently raising serious concerns about the human rights issues of these stateless children (Charny, 2004). The research findings of Human Rights Watch (HRW) (2008) similarly point out the grave situation of children of North Korean mothers and Chinese fathers in Yanbian, northeast China, especially in their access to education. To gain access to basic services, such as education and healthcare, every Chinese citizen is required to register under Hukou, a household registration system. However, registering for this system can expose the illegal status of the child’s mother, resulting in their arrest and repatriation. Additionally, there are inconsistencies in the treatment of children of North Korean women across different districts in Yanbian, with some only allowing the registration once their mother has been repatriated to North Korea (HRW, 2008). Separating children from their mothers is a violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which China is a party, as clearly stated by HRW (2008). In addition to these factors, imprisoned women are subject to poor diet and physically demanding labour, normally lasting from 5 am until 7 or 8 pm (Charny, 2005; Muico, 2005). Ms D’s narrative illustrates the harsh treatment of repatriated prisoners: ‘In North Korea we were treated like the slaves we see on TV. There were people who monitored us. In the spring we had to prepare for spring farming. But in North Korea there is no transport and occasionally there were cows but if there were not even cows, they used people like us who were captured. In order to deal with fertilizer, we had to walk to the farm carrying it twice in the morning. Since we had to walk a long distance without eating properly and having been imprisoned for a long time, people collapsed in a row. Then those who were guarding us followed us, kicked us to get up. But some people couldn’t get up and I collapsed there as well. Then we were piggybacked to this place until we recovered and then they dragged 92

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us back to work … When we were repatriated, people like us were labelled as traitors who had betrayed their own country. They made us stand in meetings and said these kinds of people who betrayed the country should be killed. So many people are very afraid.’ Ms B’s narrative further illustrates the range of abuse endured by women prisoners on the whim of the guards, who seem to relish their cruelty of using inmates as a source of amusement, watching their suffering and evoking hatred among them. This is firmly supported by the structurally and institutionally violent culture: ‘We got up at 6 am and worked till 6.30 pm. They gave us a so-​called meal with a few grains and dried leaves around 6.30 in the evening. After eating that one, they made us sing propaganda songs, and if we didn’t make a sound, male guards came and beat us … During the lunch, if we tried to rest, they didn’t let us by beating or kicking us. Even if we worked slowly, we had to pretend to be working. When people had been in the prison for a long time, they became weak and looked awful with malnutrition. And their shoes got all torn, but the guards didn’t care. In the summer, we worked until the sun set. Then, after dinner, we had to do Saenghwal chonghwa6 [life review meetings] about the day. Once we’d finished the self-​criticism session, we had to memorize the party’s ten principles and then present what we’d memorized. Some days they opened Oraghoe [entertainment], so they played with people. Could people who were exhausted sing? But we had to because we were beaten if we didn’t. We had to sing songs like ‘Let’s protect socialism’ or songs that worship Kim Jong Il. When people did something wrong during self-​criticism, or they didn’t criticise themselves properly, the guards made people beat each other. At first, people couldn’t because they pitied each other and didn’t have enough strength, but the guard would say “if you don’t, I’ll beat you.” So they were forced to, and once the other person started to beat them, it made them angry and they ended up fighting until blood came out. It’s unfathomable. In my case as well, when people beat me like that, they did it not because they hated me so much, but because they couldn’t release their anger anywhere else.’ Additionally, prisoners are forced to sleep while kneeling and are punished for any physical movement in the harsh and cramped space (Charny, 2005). According to Foucault (1977), our bodies have become the subject of state control and power. He argues that punitive measures deployed against prisoners not only have the ‘negative’ effect of repression, exclusion and elimination, but also have ‘positive’ effects in shaping docile bodies that 93

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conform to the ‘normalizing gaze’ of the state. The narrative of Ms E reveals how the regulation of bodily movement of the prisoners is an inseparable part of the controlling apparatus within North Korean prisons: ‘We sat with our heads bent in prison all day, doing nothing for a month. So our neck bone at the back stuck out. Because it was so painful, you couldn’t lift your head all of a sudden. Otherwise, it felt like dying. In our prison room we didn’t have a camera, luckily, so we occasionally were able to stretch our legs when there were no officers watching. But other rooms had CCTV cameras, so if anyone was found to move, the officers called out “Come out so and so in room X!” and they got beaten really badly, even though they had moved their heads just a tiny bit. Imagine sitting like that all day. It really drove you mad, and in the end it made you think it’s better to die.’ What Phipps (2020, p 124) calls ‘the social death of incarceration: a loss of humanity, neglect and reduction to “bare life” ’ encapsulates the experiences of North Korean women in detention facilities. According to a United Nations Commission of Inquiry report on human rights in the DPRK (UNHRC, 2014), China has violated its obligations under international human rights and refugee law over its treatment of North Korean refugees. It states that, in particular, China’s practice of repatriating refugees to the DPRK can be regarded as a crime against humanity. Some North Koreans crossing the border into China leave the North owing to a well-​founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of political oppression (HRW, 2002). In addition, even if North Koreans do not qualify for the Refugee Convention prior to crossing into China, they are very likely to do so after the fact as refugees sur place because they have a well-​founded fear of persecution if they ever return to North Korea (HRW, 2002; Aldrich, 2011; Garcia, 2019), as described above. In addressing the dire situation faced by North Korean women in China, HRW (2008) urges the Chinese government to stop repatriating North Koreans, especially women and children, and for it to grant UNHCR access to North Koreans in China to assess their refugee status. However, China ignores the international claims of its human rights abuses against North Korean women, citing it as a matter of sovereignty (Eom and Kim, 2016). Nor does China want to anger its ally, destabilize the Korean peninsula, or encourage North Koreans to come to China (Lankov, 2004). According to Lankov, repatriation is a cheaper option for China than granting refugee status, which will require it to provide aid. Moreover, most Chinese do not want China to pressurize the North too much, because it may cause further imbalance of the strategic structure in Northeast Asia (Shulong, 2015). In a similar vein, the ROK does not want military conflict 94

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or any other disastrous situations that would have a direct impact on the South. Nor does it want the responsibility of accepting millions of people unaccustomed or hostile to South Korean culture (Linantud and Beatty, 2011). These scholars continue to argue that China, the US, South Korea and Japan all believe that they need North Korea to survive, instead of it undergoing unpredictable change, in the interests of individual nation-​states and Northeast Asian regional stability. As stated in Betts’ (2013) reconceptualization of forced migrants as ‘survival migrants’, discussed in Chapter 1, for people who do not have the protection of their own nation-​states in times of existential threat, crossing borders to other countries becomes the only available solution for survival. Arendt (2017 [1951]) critically discusses the devastating repercussions for stateless persons that result from tying human rights to nation-​states that fail to provide adequate protection for their people. The post-​war replacement of ‘statelessness’ with ‘displaced persons’ as a means of liquidating ‘statelessness’, according to Arendt, has implied the deportation of people back to their exit state, which either denies their citizenship or wants to expedite their repatriation for punishment, as in the case of North Koreans in China. Given that forced migrants, such as North Korean refugees, are deprived of the protection of their own governments, they should be given international protection. In advancing this debate, the notion of mobility justice can be useful. Sheller (2018, p 14) defines mobility justice as ‘an overarching concept for thinking about how power and inequality inform the governance and control of the movement, shaping the patterns of unequal mobility and immobility in the circulation of people, resources and information’. Building on this, we can promote justice for North Korean women escapees, recognizing the injustice they face on a daily basis while applying the concept of survival migration; for instance, through the provision of a temporary passport for them to migrate safely to a democratic country where they could claim refugee status, as suggested by Ms A in the next chapter.

Conclusion As demonstrated in this chapter, North Korean women are subject to an ongoing cycle of oppression and exploitation despite supposedly increased opportunities for them to navigate the economic sphere and to negotiate gendered roles with their husbands through the weakening of the official command economy. It is evident from my examination that the political, economic and cultural structures of the DPRK and China, in combination with geopolitical relations and individual nation-​states’ interests, are responsible for North Korean women’s oppressive lives, both inside and outside North Korea. In conjunction with the criminogenic regime of mobility, I argue that a geopolitics which prioritizes the political 95

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and economic interests of nation-​states over protecting human rights has engendered the continuing violations of North Korean women’s basic rights, both within and beyond the geographical boundaries of the DPRK. As claimed by Arendt (2017 [1951]), even the creation of international treaties and organizations to deal with people expelled from their own country has not been successful in practice, leaving them without any protection of their fundamental rights. Likewise, despite efforts made by international organizations, such as the UN, the human rights of North Korean women remain largely unresolved, subsumed by the political and security interests of nation-​states. What the future holds for North Korean women’s human rights remains uncertain. In this context, the role of grassroots movements led by female defectors can be vital, and I turn to these in the next chapter. Notes 1

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In the theorization of regimes of mobility, Schiller and Salazar (2013, p 189) explain that ‘the term “regime” calls attention to the role both of individual states and of changing international regulatory and surveillance administrations that affect individual mobility’. Simultaneously, they use the term to highlight ‘governmentality and hegemony’, which embody ongoing struggles around ‘the categories of similarity, difference, belonging and strangeness’ and discriminate against socially marginalized groups, especially those from poorer nation-​states. A traditional patriarchal idea that originated in the Josun Dynasty, suggesting that men are inherently superior to women and therefore women should be treated differently, reflecting these unequal qualities. The term originates from the concept of Yin and Yang from Chinese philosophy and the East Asian Confucian worldview. Its literal meaning is that men are high and women are low. This stems from the association of the sky with men, whilst the earth is associated with women (Encyclopaedia of Korean Culture Online). North Korean informal markets. The typical stallholder in Jangmadang is a lower-​or middle-​class woman who is usually middle-​aged and married (Tudor and Pearson, 2015). The exemption of married women from formal employment means that they are free to become involved in market trading (Haggard and Noland, 2012; Lankov and Kim, 2014). This encompasses both legally sanctioned and illicit black markets. Since the 1990s’ famine, Jangmadangs have become one of the most crucial sources of livelihood and food for ordinary people (Lu, 2019). Confucianism delineates an ancient Chinese tradition that had a significant influence on the cultural formation of East Asian countries, which began during the political and cultural expansion of the Han dynasty (Oldstone-​Moore, 2003). Confucianism is founded on the belief that human relationships are fulfilled through the idea of a natural hierarchy. The most critical relationships in Confucian principles are those between parents and child, husband and wife, elder brother and younger brother, and ruler and subject (Lau, 1979; Oldstone-​Moore, 2003). Amongst these, filial piety is regarded as the lynchpin of Confucian virtue: parents have a duty to take care of a child with the provision of education, care and moral formation, while a child has an obligation to be obedient, respectful and to look after his parents in old age and after death (Bell, 2008). The colloquial version of Kukga Bowibu: the North Korean secret police agency, also known as the Ministry of State Security. According to Muico (2007, p 32), the jurisdiction of this National Security Agency is political crimes, and any cases deemed non-​political are transferred to the People’s Safety Agency (Inmin boansung) in local towns. 96

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Saenghwal chonghwa consists of self-​criticism and mutual-​criticism sessions through which people over the age of 14 publicly criticize themselves and others, linking to the state ideology (Fahy, 2019). The practice of Saenghwal chonghwa began in 1962, and has become a feature of everyday life for all citizens (Radio Free Asia, 2019). Fahy (2019) notes that sometimes these criticisms last for weeks, engendering spaces for physical abuse. According to Baek (2016), they are instrumental in reinforcing the establishment of the state ideology in people’s lives. Together with surveillance, the regime deploys collective criticism sessions as its principal techniques to ‘maintain a society of paranoia, watchfulness, and blame’ (Fahy, 2019, p 72).

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North Korean Women’s Human Rights Activism Introduction As suggested by Kotef (2015, pp 13–​14), we should think of politics as movement, as collective action to subvert the status quo and turn the seemingly impossible into reality: … to think of politics itself qua movement. Standing as an opposition to nature, to stable power structures, to a static state bureaucracy, politics brings the potential carried by instability: the potential of change, of widening the gaps allowing our agency, redistributing resources, and realigning power … The political is the domain in which and upon which humans can act, which humans can change. When faced with a regime like the DPRK, such optimism seems vital. Having examined North Korean women’s stories of human rights violations in Chapter 3, in this chapter I focus on their activism. These activists’ narratives suggest that their harrowing experiences during their escapes and subsequent lives in China initially made them feel ashamed, especially as women, and therefore they managed their pain and trauma in silence. However, for each of them there had been a transitional phase, from victimhood to activism, although the extent of their involvement in activism could vary, contingent upon various factors. As demonstrated by Thalhammer (2001), individuals’ participation in human rights activism is heterogeneous, depending on variegated circumstances, such as whether they have been directly affected by the regime’s violence. Such heterogeneity can also be found among my participants, deriving not only from the extent of their engagement but also from whether they have clearly articulable ideas and plans for the future. This is also influenced by their educational level and intellectual ability, alongside their 105

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commitment and dedication. By the same token, individuals’ participation in political activism is shaped by their education, occupation and income, which are interrelated with their gender and ethnicity (Norris, 2009). Similarly, some researchers have observed that a high educational level is an important contributing factor to becoming an activist (Ducan, 1999; Hall, 2019). However, this is not always the case for North Korean defectors’ activism. The educational levels of North Korean activists in the UK vary from those who are highly educated to those who have received middle-​to high-​school level qualifications. What is noticeable though is the relevance of high educational levels to those who take leading roles in activism. My research clearly shows that the majority of those who lead activism were educated to degree-​level and held professional jobs in the DPRK. This resonates with women’s activism, represented by the leading female activist, Ms A, whose interviews feature prominently in this chapter. I begin the next section with an examination of how some women underwent the transition from victim to activist, including the motivators behind their involvement in activism. This is followed by a discussion of the challenges and barriers they face in their activism. In the following section, I present the tactics and strategies they deploy to offset such challenges while pursuing their long-​term goals. Finally, I discuss the importance of their activism to the outlook for North Korean human rights.

Changing subjectivities: from invisible ‘victims’1 to activists What connects North Korean women activists is their lived experience as subjects of gendered violence through systemic discrimination by the state and through trafficking, imprisonment and degrading treatment. Their experiential understanding has become pivotal to their activism; gaining a critical understanding of human rights and the reality of North Koreans was the first step for their political engagement.

Critical awareness as a starting point The process of learning about human rights and recognizing their importance was critical for defectors to become involved in human rights activism: Ms K: ‘When we were in North Korea, we couldn’t imagine human rights. Since we came and lived here [in the UK], I’ve thought that enjoying everything as a human being is human rights. North Koreans don’t know even the words ‘human rights’, and in every way their human rights are oppressed … I learnt about human rights when 106

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I came to the UK … Britain is a country where human rights are well protected, so I began to develop an interest in them.’ The incomprehension of human rights in North Korea –​whose citizens have not even heard these words –​manifests in how ordinary people’s lives are constructed on the violations of such rights. A report by Robinson (2019) supports this by stating that there is no education on human rights in the DPRK. This, in fact, is despite the existence of an official version of human rights in the DPRK. These were developed by Kim Jong Il, the late father of the current leader Kim Jong Un, as discussed in the previous chapter. In this version, human rights are founded on the collective goal of national survival, through the worship of the Supreme Leader’s will, which overrides individual rights and needs (Song, 2011). An article in Rodong Shinmun in 1995 –​‘For True Human Rights’ –​stated that the rights of individuals can be easily overridden by North Korean socialist human rights, which legitimize the persecution of anyone deemed to be an enemy of socialism (Fahy, 2019). This stance is also reflected in North Korea’s own human rights report (DPRK Association for Human Rights Studies, 2014), which equates human rights with state sovereignty. From the DPRK’s perspective, human rights belong to the realm of a nation-​state’s affairs, and national sovereignty should be a prerequisite for protecting such rights. This implies the justifiability of ‘whatever means’ they use under the banner of protecting the DPRK’s sovereignty. Furthermore, in this report, the DPRK government is in denial of its human rights violations, attributing blame to the UN and other states, which it accuses of fabrication, based on anti-​DPRK campaigns aimed at overthrowing the regime. For relativist claimants, international human rights reflect the liberal individualism of the West, and overlook the significance of group membership and duties that are highly regarded in many non-​Western countries (Binder, 1999). Moreover, some would argue that, for countries with emerging economies, the civil liberties prioritized in the West might be less important due to dire social and economic needs (Skegg, 2005). The DPRK regime has adopted a similar standpoint to these critiques in justifying its handling of human rights, while simultaneously exploiting contentious debates over whether the imposition of such rights is a manifestation of Western hegemony as well as moral and cultural imperialism (Kim, 1993; Binder, 1999; Deacon, 2003; Skegg, 2005; Merry, 2006; Healy, 2008; Oba, 2008; Semplici, 2013; Mende, 2021). This kind of attempt to deny its culpability resonates with the critical analysis of Bob (2019), which demonstrates how a nation-​state deploys rights as an instrument to subordinate and suppress individuals, for instance, in the name of defending itself from existential threats. According to Bob, a dominant group using this type of tactic would 107

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depict itself as a victim, as indeed North Korea does in its endeavour to portray itself as a victim of ‘false’ accusations by international bodies. However, the DPRK regime’s claims can be challenged on several grounds. As suggested by Mende (2021, p 41), the foundational ideas of human rights have cross-​cultural origins: for example, the principles of freedom, liberty and tolerance can be found in Buddhism, Confucianism and Hinduism. At the same time, crucial human rights treaties have acquired international support, regardless of cultural variation and differences. For example, 189 states have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and 196 countries are party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, including the DPRK (UN, 2022), demonstrating universal values which can be applied to anyone in the world on the basis of being a human. In addition, the cultural relativist argument is used as a masquerade to preserve the dominance of the powerful, such as males over females or dictators over citizens, as exemplified by the DPRK. In a similar fashion, it is crucial to stress that ‘gender oppression is systemic and cross-​cultural’ (Kim, 1993, p 49). In that regard, treating women’s suppression as a culturally-​specific issue would not do justice to remedying it. In association with this, Ignatieff (2001, p 170) postulates that ‘human rights are a political set of claims that seek to enhance and defend the powerless against the powerful’. Therefore, the binary between West versus non-​West poses potential risks in addressing the human rights agenda, obfuscating cross-​ cutting forms of inequality and oppression, such as gender and ethnicity, while overlooking diversity and plurality within society (Mende, 2021). In addition, this dichotomy risks disregarding similarities and overlaps between the West and ‘the rest’. More critically, the dichotomy imperils the human rights of non-​Western citizens, who are thereby complicit in the actions of governments that exploit the same argument to legitimize their repressive regimes. In this respect, it is problematic to treat human rights and local cultures as oppositional, associating the former with liberating modernity and the latter with oppressive tradition (Merry, 2003). As stated by Merry (2003, p 58), culture should be understood as ‘contested, hybridized, and dynamic’, rather than ‘bounded and static’, which leads to challenging the assumption that ‘cultural relativism means defending every practice and every belief at all costs’. Skegg (2005) likewise questions whether it is justifiable for Western countries to relinquish their obligations to act on human rights abuses in other countries in the name of respecting cultural difference. Healy (2008) suggests that dual commitment to cultural diversity and respect for individual rights may provide conciliatory solutions for these contentious issues around universalism and cultural relativism. While human rights work should be founded on universal ‘ideas of a common humanity and globalised citizenship’, it should also take a contextualized approach towards intercultural practice (Skegg, 2005, p 671). 108

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With specific reference to human rights debates regarding the DPRK, I agree with the scholars who have cautiously questioned the cultural relativist perspectives. I argue that it is unjust to support the North Korean regime’s version of human rights while criticizing human rights based on individual liberty and freedom as an indication of Western hegemony over the regime. As illustrated by the narratives that follow, for the glorification of national interests, the minority ruling elite has systematically violated and exploited the human rights of individuals to maintain its power, leading to a life devoid of humanity: Ms D: ‘The reality of North Korea is blatantly obvious; it’s a life worse than those of animals. Where could human rights be? If we said such words, we would be beaten to death. If we’re told to die, then we die, if told to live, then we live.’ Ms F: ‘If people had known about human rights, a war or something else would probably have happened. But we didn’t know them at all and lived only with subservience. When I came out of North Korea, I realised “ah, North Korea is really the worst country”.’ Scholars have noted that total control is a necessary feature of a totalitarian state (Arendt, 2017 [1951]; Brzezinski, 1956; Tucker, 1961, 1965), and yet it is also a sign of the vulnerability of such states (Cho, 2020). A country like the DPRK, which is founded on an arbitrary personality cult and fabrications and is without legitimate democratic processes or systems, inevitably resorts to direct control of every aspect of people’s lives, built on fear as a principal means of maintaining power (Tapscott, 2021). From the participants’ narratives, it can be inferred that the DPRK uses the censoring of all information as a deliberate tactic to create docile subjects and to prevent any form of resistance (Foucault, 1977). It took a while for the defectors to recognize and understand individual-​ centred human rights; this is unsurprising, given that their lives in North Korea were moulded to serve the country and its ‘dear leaders’, without individuality. Living a free life outside the DPRK and thereby gaining a clear understanding of the Kim family’s hypocrisy since their escape has given some defectors the opportunity to critically evaluate the situation in their ‘home’ country. This renewed knowledge has led some to see a possible pathway towards achieving human rights for North Koreans by awakening them to reality, beyond addressing the immediate issue of subsistence-​level survival: Ms K: ‘What I’ve felt since I came to the UK regarding human rights is that there are many North Koreans who are starving and die of hunger, 109

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but that this is not a priority. Yes of course clothes, food and shelter are the priorities. But what I feel is that our brains need to be awoken first because, from my perspective, North Korea is not a country and Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un are like thugs. Really, it’s the same as blocking the ears and mouths of people and even tying up their legs because people can’t move without permission. So, if we make North Korean people all open their ears, eyes and mouths, and regain their rights to speech, it would be quicker to achieve human rights.’ Ms K’s process of awakening from her naivete can be linked to the notion of conscientization (conscientatizacao) proposed by Freire (1970, 1974a, 1974b). Conscientization is defined as ‘learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to make action against the oppressive elements of reality’ (1970, p 9). In other words, it refers to critical consciousness, which helps the oppressed to become aware of the broader social conditions they are facing and to counter internalized oppression. Freire argues that the awakening of critical consciousness leads to the expression of social discontent. However, according to Freire (1970, p 23), recognizing their oppressed reality does not automatically lead to liberation, which is an agonizing process of rebirth: Liberation is thus a childbirth, and a painful one … In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform. This perception is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for liberation; it must become the motivating force for liberating action. Nor does the discovery by the oppressed that they exist in dialectical relationship to the oppressor, as his antithesis –​that without them the oppressor could not exist –​in itself constitute liberation. The oppressed can overcome the contradiction in which they are caught only when this perception enlists them in the struggle to free themselves. Consonant with Freire, North Korean women activists did not stop at the point of understanding their reality. The process of comprehending their reality has for them become the impetus to become involved in activism in their endeavour to open up the blocked ‘ears, eyes and mouths’ of others still in North Korea, while bringing about changes in the way that women (and children) are treated, both inside and outside the country.

Sharing stories as an act of resistance Together with critical awakening, sharing stories can be an important channel through which women gain renewed understanding of their past experiences 110

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as violations of their human rights, rather than as part of the duties and obligations of their daily life (Merry, 2006). In a similar vein, North Korean women have undergone shifts in their subjectivities by sharing their stories with others through their testimonies to the UN and on other platforms since their arrival in a democratic country, having begun to understand their lives in North Korea and China as filled with violations of their rights. In this sense, storytelling is an important strategy of advocacy (Marchetti, 2016). As described in Chapter 3, Ms A left North Korea for China during the famine with the hope of following her dying father’s wish to save her brother. Soon after arriving in China, she was sold to a Chinese man for marriage with a threat from the broker about her and her brother’s safety. Then she was impregnated and had a child. However, while her child was still young, she was caught and repatriated to the DPRK, leaving him in China. After escaping from North Korea once more, she returned to China and was reunited with her son. She met her current husband during her escape from China. They arrived in the UK and were granted refugee status. However, her involvement in human rights activism did not begin immediately. In fact, there were periods when she felt ashamed of her experience and tried to hide it: ‘I didn’t just see my own suffering but also other people’s suffering … Trafficking is a shameful thing, to be frank, and it’s shameful for a woman to talk about the experience of being trafficked. Also, I have children and a husband, so initially I suppressed my experiences. Then I asked my son and my husband whether it would be OK for me to testify at the UN, because if I did, I would have to tell all the things about trafficking and my son. My son asked me to give him one day to think it over and then he said I should do whatever I wanted because he knew I was doing it not only for myself but also for others, so his words became encouragement … My husband also said that because he had directly witnessed lots of North Korean female victims of human trafficking and forced abortions when they were repatriated to North Korea, I should tell the truth. Otherwise, the truth would be buried forever if victims like us did not tell our stories.’ Resonating with Ms A’s narrative, Sliwinski (2009) argues that people gain empathic understanding of other people’s suffering and pain from their own experience. Therefore, suffering traumatic experiences could become the source of an altruistic act (Staub and Vollhardt, 2008). In this transitional process, support from loved ones is profoundly important (Hernandez-​ Wolfe, 2011), as illuminated in the case of Ms A who has transformed from an ‘invisible’ victim of ‘shameful’ human trafficking to an outspoken female human rights activist. Her narrative additionally accentuates the significance 111

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of her dream of better lives for North Korean women and children through her involvement in activism. The existing literature has further noted the contributions of women who have endured direct experiences of marginalization, discrimination and gender-​based violence to achieving justice and improving the lives of women from divergent social backgrounds (Weed, 2005; Eade and Macleod, 2011; Duncan, 1999, 2018). Duncan (1999) argues that being the subject of sexual harassment enables some women to develop a critical consciousness about the issues women face and leads to women’s rights activism. Additionally, the direct experience of being among a marginalized group which suffers structural discrimination and oppression often leads to the politicization of the group’s members and collective action for change, originating from their acute awareness of their marginalized status and the injustice directly affecting their lives (Duncan, 2018). This is particularly related to the experience of women who have witnessed and endured inequalities, raising questions about the existing system and social order. Weed (2005, p 100) draws our attention to the value of the ‘experiential knowledge’ of activists –​who have been subjected to gender-​based harm –​ through offering insights into their past ordeals. Thus, collective narratives are critical components of the social movements that challenge violence against women (Creek and Dunn, 2011). As eloquently expressed by Bunch (1990), it is vital to treat women’s rights as human rights and to increase the visibility of issues faced by women around the globe every day. The violence that women experience is a political issue, stemming from the structure of power imbalance, domination and subordination between men and women in society, as also articulated by Walby (1989). Hence, ‘documenting the problems of women refugees and developing responsible policies’ is an example of treating women’s rights as political and civil rights (Bunch, 1990, p 493).

A sense of responsibility towards others Ms A found that, in conjunction with the realization of the importance of sharing her stories with others, a conversation with her son created a turning point or transformative point for her: ‘I started my activism towards the end of 2012. Prior to that, I didn’t do human rights activism because I didn’t know what human rights were and I didn’t know the language or anything in this society. I just thought I would become a teacher, via studying, because I worked as a teacher originally, but that changed after listening to my son’s question. So I’m doing it with a sense of mission and responsibility. The question itself was: why didn’t I as a parent take responsibility for 112

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my son? … So I endeavour to take responsibility for that question, but I see it as a question posed by all the children of North Korea, and children in China who have been separated from their mothers and fathers. In order to show them that we mums and dads haven’t abandoned our children, we will take responsibility until the end as we endeavour to find our children. It might not be achieved within a day, but over generations, so if it isn’t realised in this generation, it will pass on to the next.’ Ms A’s activism has two interrelated facets. Alongside North Korean women’s human rights, and based on her personal experience, she is also concerned about children born in China or in a third country where –​due to the trafficking and/​or smuggling of North Korean women and their illegal status –​their identity and rights are not protected. Her oldest son was born in China without legal status, and he was left behind when she was repatriated to the DPRK. He had wrongly believed that she had abandoned him until they had an open conversation many years later in the UK. This triggered a sense of responsibility in Ms A for all those children of North Korean women and Chinese fathers. Numerous studies have highlighted a sense of social responsibility as being one of the major reasons behind people’s participation in activism and voluntary work to help others (Faver, 2001; Borshuck, 2004; Gopalan et al, 2012; Poch, 2015; Horowitz, 2017; Craddock, 2019; Budziszewska and Glod, 2021). For instance, research by Faver (2001) –​investigating motivators for women’s social activism –​suggests that women’s sense of responsibility was a major driving force behind their activism; ‘the responsibility took the form of responsibility to take care of people (known as stewardship), responsibility to pass on what one has received, and responsibility to reduce unfair disadvantage and redistribute power and resources more equitably’ (p 324). In another study, by Budziszewska and Glod (2021), young people’s participation in environmental activism was derived from a strong sense of ethical duty to others, especially in association with their concern for the most disadvantaged and vulnerable. Similarly, the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO, n.d.) suggests that, across the different groups it studied, a sense of responsibility was a strong motivator for people to take part in movements that challenge social injustice despite their heterogenous social and geographical backgrounds, age, gender and ethnicity. What the PRIO found was that the sense of responsibility people felt was associated with their own experiences of injustice and oppression. These people were using oppressive experiences as an engine to achieve social good and to effect positive changes, with a clear sense of purpose and altruistic conviction, despite challenging conditions under authoritarianism and/​or war. 113

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Connections with the lead activist As well as the acquisition of critical consciousness, women activists began their activism through encouragement from the lead activist, as illustrated below by the narratives of Ms K and Ms F. Ms K began to illicitly cross the border to China during the 1990s due to food shortages and no improvement in her situation following various attempts to trade in the DPRK. With the help of her nephew, who lived in China, she became involved in brokerage to find lost family members in the North at the request of South Koreans who were looking for their relatives, following the division between the two countries. This involved her travelling back and forth illegally between the North and China, using bribery and brokers. It was highly risky but well-​paid. However, improvements in her living conditions were noticed by the spies who are planted in every neighbourhood and she was arrested by the police, who ambushed her in her house at 2 am one night. Ten days of inhumane treatment in prison made her decide to leave North Korea, something she had not considered before because of her concerns about other family members, despite numerous crossings to China and witnessing its wealth. She was caught and repatriated to the North three times, yet she finally managed to escape with the help of a family member. These unsettling experiences, together with her exposure to the outside world through South Korean TV programmes, led her to leave China for South Korea, and eventually to reach the UK. Concomitant with the critical understanding she gained, her relationship with the lead activist was crucial to her activism: ‘The reason I got involved in human rights activism was because, when we came to a developed country like Britain, we learnt about human rights. I also felt betrayed that we were deceived by the North Korean regime for 50 years. From this realization, if we want the dictatorial regime to collapse quickly, we have to raise our voices, no matter how small they are. Also, we have pioneers who lead; I felt I should work in unison with them, and that was how I started … While I was living in a foreign country, I realized that we North Koreans have lived without knowing about human rights, not only women’s human rights … Ms A was doing activism and asked me whether I would take part in human rights activism, so I became involved … Many people don’t know about North Korea and if they could get to know that North Korean human rights are poor, then I thought they would make a lot of effort to improve them.’ Similarly to Ms K, Ms F’s motivation to participate in activism originated from her connection with the lead activist, especially her experience of being supported during the process of settlement in the UK. Ms F escaped North 114

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Korea after local officials discovered her to be in possession of a Bible, which she had obtained from another North Korean who was involved in illicit proselytization by secretly passing Bibles to North Koreans.2 After a tip-​off from a neighbour, her house was raided and she was arrested by the secret police, even though she was not a Christian and did not have much knowledge of the Bible at that time. She was tortured and still suffers from its effects. This led her to escaping with her children to China, and eventually to South Korea. However, after being treated badly in the ROK, she came to the UK seeking asylum. Her contribution was described as repaying those who had helped her by sharing her harrowing experiences with others to raise awareness: ‘I’m taking part in the activism because I’ve received a lot of help, and if I can contribute to people’s awareness with just a single word … Once I got to know Ms A, I began to get involved. If there were interviews or human rights activism meetings, then I accompanied her. Because of my gratitude for her humanity.’ Borshuck (2004) suggests that social relationships are important for taking part in activism; people begin their involvement in activism due to being influenced by friends and those to whom they are close, as well as their own experience and sense of marginality in society. Other studies have also revealed the significant influence of personal and social relationships for individuals to initially participate in activism (Hamilton, 2007; Horowitz, 2017). For instance, networked relations and interactions with friends were a vital source of emotional support for activists to retain their beliefs and actions; for example, through encouragement to become involved in certain activities (Horowitz, 2017), as well as the development of women’s role in activism (Hamilton, 2007). Reflecting these ideas, Deckop et al (2003) highlight the importance of reciprocity in social relations and how it motivates individuals to act positively to favourable treatment. Compared to economic exchange, which involves contractual and monetary payment, social exchange entails the more general moral norm of reciprocity that might indirectly benefit others and the group in general (Blau, 1964). In that sense, reciprocation does not involve an exact exchange of time and services, but rather an exchange of value (Rettig, 2006), which can operate as a factor mobilizing women to activism through a sense of the bond they share and the helping of ‘fictive kin’ (Cody, 2016, p 194). In addition, the important role of leadership in social and political activism has been examined in numerous studies (Ryan, 2016; Bartling, 2017; Satybaldieva, 2018; Lee et al, 2021). The leader’s role is particularly vital in representing and asserting the rights of social groups to relevant institutions and authorities (Satybaldieva, 2018), in conjunction with taking strategic 115

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action and directing the movement (Ryan, 2016; Bartling, 2017). Great leadership is often associated with individuals ‘who are charismatic, and who embody foresight, trustworthiness, positivity, dynamism, and motivation, and strong communication skills’ (Den Hartog et al, 1999, cited by Leigh et al, 2021, p 175). These characteristics are embodied by the leading activist, and undeniably it is her leadership that enables the fight to continue.

A sense of guilt stemming from collective conscience My participants’ narratives were imbued with collective conscience and guilt. Having lived in a communitarian system, in which their everyday interactions were founded on the collective goals, their concerns about those who remain in the North continued: Interviewer: Ms F:

How do you think about those who remain in North Korea through your experience? I feel pain. When will those people be able to eat and live well through unification? When I look at the present, I’ve heard the Northern government has released military rice, emergency rice in preparation for a war, because everything is completely blocked due to the Coronavirus. The North used to trade a lot with China, but it’s all blocked and if South Korea occasionally sends food, it doesn’t reach the ordinary people, and people could earn money and survive by going to China and trading, but [now] it’s completely blocked. So it’s very hard to live.

As reflected in this account, emotions are an inseparable component of the experience of migrants (Baldassar, 2008; Skrbis, 2008; Wise and Velayutham, 2017) and of social movements as a source of mobilization (or hindrance) (Jasper, 2011). Ms F’s concerns are derived from her awareness of the severe impact of COVID-​19 and the DPRK government’s exploitation of foreign aid, resulting in aid not reaching ordinary people who are struggling desperately with food shortages (Manyin and Nikitin, 2014; Reiss and Waldron, 2018). Along with sympathy, some expressed a sense of guilt about their elevated quality of life in a democratic society that is far removed from that of the North Korean people back ‘home’: Ms K:

I became involved in North Korean human rights activism after realizing that we North Korean people lived without knowing about not only women’s human rights but also wider human rights … What shall 116

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Interviewer: Ms K:

I say, a bit of conscience? While living as an escapee, I haven’t lived a shameful life to those in North Korea, I think I feel less guilty [by doing activism] … So when I participate in human rights activism, I feel I’ve become a patriot, thinking that there is something I can do for the people because I’m here outside North Korea. Why do you feel guilty? We’re enjoying life with a level of clothing, food and housing security that can’t be imagined in North Korea. Mentally and in all aspects, so I feel very sorry … I feel guilty a lot.

Guilt, as documented by Jacobsson and Lindblom (2013), is the indivisible fabric of the participants’ activism. According to these researchers, guilt not only constitutes a driving force for their activism but its retention is also a necessary constituent. In this sense, guilt is a manifestation of their moral conscience and an instrumental emotional tool for pursuing their ideals. Katchadourian (2010, p 21) suggests that ‘the subjective emotion of feeling guilty is … the painful internal tension due to the awareness of having done wrong, or having failed to carry out moral obligation’. In this context, what Ms K said above is suggestive of her profound belief that perhaps one day the truth will be known to all North Koreans, and that then they will seek accountability for the actions taken by defectors –​ who have lived freely and have known about the regime’s lies while those who remained in North Korea have continued to suffer. This underlines an inseparable connection between guilt and an individual’s ability to judge right from wrong (Fabricius, 2004). The concept of guilt, in this sense, is closely interrelated with morality and moral responsibility (Lamb, 1983). As such, guilt accompanies perceiving someone else’s pain and evaluating one’s contribution to that pain (Fabricius, 2004). Thus, acknowledging guilt indicates empathy in the process of ‘feeling other people’s pain’, which might operate as a trigger for subsequent participation in activism (Stephen and Finlay, 1999; Craddock, 2019). Hoffman (1989, p 290, cited by Borshuk, 2004, p 302) proposes that ‘emotional empathy can lead to “existential guilt” wherein more advantaged individuals experience guilt regarding their privileged position relative to others’. This can be associated with Ms K’s internal struggle, stemming from her acute sense of privilege over other North Koreans due to her settlement in Britain. As suggested by Stephen and Finlay (1999) and Craddock (2019), empathy and caring for others are vital factors that sustain people’s activism and spur them on. Such compassion is regarded as a moral responsibility to the collective and a warrant for not leading a ‘shameful life’ to people remaining in North Korea, as stated in Ms K’s account. Therefore, according to Kleres 117

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and Wettergren (2017, p 514), guilt can play an influential role in political activism by transforming demobilizing fear into collective and mobilizing anger that recognizes ‘the responsibility of power-​holders’.

Challenges of activism Deep pain and desire to forget the past Not many human rights activists are women, and only a handful of campaigners drive this activism, with limited support from fellow defectors. This originates in a multitude of factors, including the language barrier, shame, deep emotional pain and the desire to be free from any constraining practice that reminds them of their controlled life in the DPRK. Many women defectors mentioned a sense of shame and deep pain, which leads them to avoid talking about their harrowing experiences, as illuminated by Ms D’s narrative in the previous chapter. Ms F also expressed a similar sentiment: ‘We wish our painful memories would disappear and we don’t want to remember them.’ Moreover, people are resistant to any constraints in their lives that are reminiscent of their politically controlled past. As described by Ms F, every sphere of their life was visibly politicized, and thus politics is seen as negative: ‘Because we were continuously controlled politically from birth, we don’t like politics. Because we couldn’t do what we wanted to do, even one thing, because we couldn’t do anything due to the ban from the government … If someone does human rights activism, other defectors don’t like it. They would say “coming here like this to find freedom is enough, but why would they embrace struggle and enter politics?” Thus, those who came first should get involved in activism, support [the people back home] and make efforts, but that isn’t the case. In fact, people don’t take part in political activism, human rights activism. Because North Korean people lived controlled lives, they want to live freely as they please without being tied to something. We had Saenghwal chonghwa [self-​criticism meetings] once a week. How much we don’t want to experience that again! Nobody left North Korea to unify (the Korean peninsula) and do human rights activism. The majority came because they were hungry.’ Ms F’s account suggests that the politicization of North Koreans as objects of political control in the DPRK deters many defectors from the process of politicization as subjects. A subject denotes a person who knows and acts, in contrast to an object that is ‘known and acted upon’ (Freire, 1970, p 10). Put differently, the highly politicized life –​yet without any political power –​to which they were subjected under the North Korean dictatorship became 118

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precisely the barrier to many defectors’ involvement in any form of political activity outside the DPRK. For many, being able to free themselves from dictatorship through defection itself is a hard-​earned opportunity to become liberated from the pressure of political engagement and to exercise their freedom of choice. However, this can be linked to Berlin’s (1969) negative notion of liberty, as distinguished from the positive concept. The former delineates the state in which individuals are not obstructed or prevented from doing things by others. In other words, this mode of freedom refers to the state of being free from any kind of restrictions. By comparison, positive freedom denotes liberty deriving from the individual’s desire to be their own master, someone who can conceive their own goals and realize them through an act of will: I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other men’s acts of will. I wish to be a subject, not an object; to be moved by reasons, by conscious purposes, which are my own, not by causes which affect me, as it were, from outside … I wish, above all, to conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bearing responsibility for my choices and able to explain them by references to my own ideas and purposes. (Berlin, 1969, p 8) As explained by Berlin, humans are interdependent and cannot be completely free from the impact of other people’s behaviour. In addition, being liberated from control does not in itself sufficiently constitute genuine liberty because, if people do not have intellectual and financial resources, they cannot make use of their freedom. Thus, negative freedom has limitations in enabling the individual to achieve self-​realization as a conscious being. Although, on the surface, DPRK defectors appear to have achieved freedom through their escape from the dictatorial state, following Berlin (1969), a truer sense of freedom built on self-​conscious decisions and acts has not been realized. This differentiation is critical in understanding the challenges of human rights activism among UK-​settled North Koreans. This is particularly relevant to women defectors, who make up the majority of North Korean refugees and yet whose participation in political activism is comparatively minuscule. As examined in Chapter 3, historically North Korean women have been subjugated to a deep-​seated patriarchal system, despite the egalitarian propaganda of communism, and their objectified position, both inside and outside the DPRK, is discernible. As observed by Havel (2009 [1985]), the elimination of any opportunity to express themselves in public or to organize politically leads to people’s profound disengagement of interest in political issues. Moreover, in a totalitarian system, independent political thinking 119

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is seen as unobtainable and simultaneously dangerous due to persecution (Havel, 2009 [1985]). Combined with these issues, most women defectors are from the relatively less educated lower class and have fled the country due to hunger and their need for survival. Given these factors, it is not surprising that the majority have not gone through a critical awakening or conscientization (Freire, 1970, 1974a, 1974b). The position of North Korean refugees is additionally indicative of the ambiguous relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed, in which the oppressed collude and are complicit in the retention of the unequal and exploitative power dynamics that oppress them. Freire (1970, p 22) aptly captures this: The oppressed suffer from the duality which has established itself in their innermost being. They discover that without freedom they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic existence, they fear it. They are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalised. Thus, in the words of Havel (2009 [1985], p 16) everyone becomes ‘an instrument of a mutual totality’ in which everyone is ‘involved and enslaved’ in maintaining the oppressive system. However, the foundations of such a system are unstable because it is built on lies, and the system works ‘only as long as people are willing to live within the lie’ (Havel, 2009 [1985], p 14). Memmi (1990 [1965]) further provides an insightful analysis of the entwined relationships between the colonizer and the colonized. He argues that, without the acceptance and complicity of the colonized to be enslaved, the colonizer cannot be the complete master or believe in its legitimacy. The colonized therefore play an equally vital role as the colonizer in the formation of the bond between the two, which, according to Memmi, is a product of dual processes of destruction and recreation of the two partners of colonization into oppressor and oppressed: One is disfigured into an oppressor, a partial, unpatriotic and treacherous being, worrying only about his privileges and their defense; the other, into an oppressed creature, whose development is broken and who compromises by his defeat. (Memmi, 1990 [1965], p 155) While it is easy to blame the DPRK regime as an agent of oppression and see North Koreans as victims, following the claims of Freire, Havel and Memmi, I argue that the regime’s oppression will last only as long as North Koreans are willing to live under such conditions. This is particularly the case for defectors, who have managed to escape and experience freedom, and have therefore gained a lens through which they can see the entangled 120

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bondage they had with their own government. Although most North Korean refugees, including women, appear to be resisting the Northern regime by disengaging from political activism, I argue that this is a manifestation of their socialization and indoctrination into passive objects, and their adaptation into the ideology of the dominated (Memmi, 1990 [1965]). As noted above, this also reflects the fact that the majority of those who fled North Korea during and after the 1990s famine are less well-​educated people from the lower class, unlike the period 1962–​93 when the majority of defectors were elites and were lured away from the DPRK by heroic treatment from the ROK, as represented in the ‘Special Compensation Act for Heroes’ in 1979 (Choi, 2018). This has arguably contributed to the lack of political engagement by many UK-​settled defectors, although there is more defector-​driven activism, especially in South Korea, partly owing to the exponential increase in the number of people who have escaped from North Korea since the 1990s. It is well documented that there is a positive correlation between education and political participation (Barro, 1999; Glaeser et al, 2004; Hillygus, 2005; Papaioannou and Siourounis, 2005; Le and Nguyen, 2021). As pointed out by Glaeser et al (2007), the stability of a dictatorship is related to low levels of education, while higher levels of education provide a better chance of challenging an anti-​democratic regime and of transition from dictatorship to democracy. In resisting authoritarian power and exercising political agency, the development of the masses can have considerable influence (Wacławczyk and Jarosz, 2017). According to Almond and Verba (1989), education fosters ‘civic culture’ for people to participate in democratic politics and to generate different kinds of political actors (active versus passive), as elucidated by the examples of North Korean refugees. In a similar vein, education plays a vital role in cultivating political interest through political knowledge acquisition (Le and Nguyen, 2021). As noted earlier, scholars have posited the impact of higher educational levels on advocacy work (McAdam, 1986; Ducan, 1999; Norris, 2009; Hall, 2019), which is particularly significant in distinguishing the leader from others in North Korean women’s political activism. Thus, Ms F’s perception of the irrelevance or marginality of politics in activism is palpably different from the opinion of the lead activist, who has learnt the centrality of politics in her campaign, as well as its significance in every sphere of human life: Ms A: ‘In the past, many people thought that politics is irrelevant, that I just need to do human rights activism. However, I’ve realized during my work over the last few years that I can’t do human rights activism without understanding politics, because our life itself is all related to politics and one can’t take a single step forward without knowing politics.’ 121

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Fear Along with the above barriers, many still fear repercussions from the regime, manifesting as potential harm to their families left in North Korea or to themselves: Interviewer: Ms F:

Ms E:

Do you worry about talking about your experience? If I have to reveal my face, I’m scared. I’ve had operations on my nose seven times because the thin bone collapsed and blocked my nose [as a consequence of the torture she suffered in North Korea when she was caught with a Bible in her house]. When I sleep at night, if I don’t sleep flat, my nose gets dry. Due to this situation, I don’t like [being exposed] … There are spies in any country … Our family was well known in our province and Bowibu knows us, so that’s scary. When I was in China as well, I was approached and asked [by a stranger] on the road: “don’t you come from North Korea? I remember your face.” I denied it and said I lived there. But because I’ve experienced this, I’m scared. When I came to the UK, I heard there is a spy household [among the North Korean defectors] in London even though people don’t know who they are. It’s not written on their foreheads so how can we know? But I’ve heard that a lot of information on UK defectors has been leaked to North Korea. There was one person linked to a spy and I was told to be careful of that person and not to trust them. A difficulty is that I have family in North Korea, so I have very limited freedom and act in a restricted way. I can’t reveal my face. I always fear revealing my voice or my identity, even a little bit. However, even though I’m fearful, I’m doing it bit by bit. Still very timid. I’m most fearful about my family’s safety … There’s nothing we can do about those who don’t participate in the activism due to fearing for their families. We can’t force them. I totally sympathize with them, 200 per cent.

As discussed previously, terror forms an essential aspect of the totalitarian state, in combination with indoctrination. As I have shown in my previous work (Lim, 2021), the fear of potential harm to their families remaining in the DPRK, as well as for their own safety, continues to affect the lives of North Korean defectors in the UK. In particular, among those who had 122

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to flee North Korea as a consequence of being subjected to torture and harrowing treatment, such fear could run deep, and have a long-​lasting psychological impact, as exemplified by Ms F’s narrative. Imagination is an essential part of displaced people’s lives; they imagine ‘how life might be’, in juxtaposition with ‘how life is, or how and what it used to be’ (Orgad, 2012, p 108). Thus, imagination for refugees is ambiguous and messy, and not clearly distinguishable from their pre-​migration experience. What Ms F and Ms E have described is evidence of their liminal status ‘between past and future, here and there, old and new, nightmare and dream’ (Orgad, 2012, p 131). Arendt (2017 [1951]) argues that a more efficacious mechanism of totalitarian control that has a long-​lasting psychological effect is propaganda with indoctrination, and not the use of violence to frighten people. In this regard, propaganda is part and parcel of ‘psychological warfare’ (Arendt, 2017 [1951]). To win such mental warfare, propaganda needs to be invisible and to seep into people’s minds without their realizing it, through unconscious and insidious processes, and ultimately to achieve legitimacy for the existing political system and power (Vysotskyi et al, 2019). What has come to light from the above accounts is the detrimental ramifications of such propaganda and indoctrination for ordinary North Korean people, even those outside its physical boundaries. In this, the social imaginary (Taylor, 2002, 2004) plays a significant role. Taylor ( 2004, p 23) defines the social imaginary as: ‘The ways in which people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations.’ Taylor (2004, p 25) posits that such a social imaginary is a ‘largely unstructured and inarticulate understanding of our whole situation’, often ‘carried in images, stories and legends’ (p 23). His concept can be directly applied to the experiences of North Korean refugees. The social imaginary largely represents a dominant ideology within a particular community, by constraining people from taking subversive actions on the basis of the imagined status quo for a social group, primarily built on the vested interests of elites, such as the Kim dynasty and its close allies (Dey and Mason, 2018). Such unstructured and loosely comprised normative beliefs –​transmitted through shared stories among fellow defectors, news stories, images and memories –​have a substantial influence on their lack of engagement in political activism. In conjunction with the various tactics deployed by the dictatorial regime, the impact of the social imaginary remains strong even outside North Korea, as suggested by my participants’ narratives. People have heard stories of what has happened to others in the UK, as well as to families and friends in the DPRK, not to mention the high-​profile assassination of Kim Jong Un’s half-​brother, Kim Jong Nam, and the execution 123

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of former Minister of State Security and Kim Jong Un’s uncle, Jang Song Taek, together with the continual threat of spies planted ‘everywhere’ in New Malden near London. This also indicates the ‘learned helplessness’ (Seligman, 1975) that many North Korean refugees feel as a result of their past life and the survival of the Northern regime, despite speculations about a possible collapse in the past (Bennett, 2013). This ‘learned helplessness’ is additionally related to the persistence of gender inequality in the DPRK, notwithstanding some recent changes due to women’s role as breadwinners. All of these function as a controlling apparatus employed by the DPRK government to inhibit many defectors’ willingness and/​or ability to participate in political movements to resist the regime. In this respect, it is understandable why Ms A defines activism broadly, as also discussed in Chapter 1: ‘I think living to the full under human rights freedoms is human rights activism.’ However, political activism can work against this hegemonic power over North Koreans by revealing its ‘true face’ and casting doubt on its legitimacy. Thus, there is an urgent need for political acts that disrupt the hegemonic norms by challenging the unfair power structures and inhumane treatment of women, and presenting an alternative vision for their lives.

Finance Financial constraints were often mentioned by activists as one of the biggest barriers to activism, as expressed by Ms G: ‘Financial support is the hardest.’ This is particularly the case for Ms A, who dedicates herself to the cause. Currently, she does not belong to any organization but leads activism on her own almost single-​handedly, with the occasional help of other women defectors and supporters: ‘Of course, there are difficulties because I’m doing it on my own, especially because of a lack of finance. When I go to an event, I’m not in a situation where I could get a train comfortably like other people, so I take a late-​night bus and return by early morning bus, so it’s tiring, but without such sacrifice, one can’t do anything. What’s particularly challenging for me is a lack of finance.’ While Ms A is experiencing acute hardship due to budget constraints, she has made a conscious choice not to become directly affiliated with an organization to gain financial support because she believes that would potentially lead her to ‘compromised’ activism, based on her previous experience: ‘When I started my activism with European Alliance, we received funding from the US State Department at first. But at that time there were lots of restrictions. There was nothing much we could do because 124

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we had to do our activism within the bounds of its budget, so it was limiting. Thus, I’ve realized from that experience that human rights activism can never be achieved while receiving money. So from then on, I’ve been doing it without joining any group because if one does activism while receiving money, people can make a mistake, if people are tied to money, people can forget their sense of responsibility and obligation. When many people do human rights activism, they first assess the financial value. But I think that’s wrong. Human rights themselves are my human rights but exchanging my rights for money is nonsensical.’ Consistent with the critical point made by Ms A, Snowden (2014) suggests that state funding skews the actions of charities and NGOs by implicitly demanding that their positions align with the government’s political stance. Therefore, in order to receive funding from the state, political activists and organizations are inevitably forced to compromise their beliefs to ‘toe the government’s line’ (Snowden, 2014, p 6). In a similar way, feminist activism within an institutional setting can be limited because the organizational structure and its established culture affect the political agenda and the scope of their activism, as highlighted by Roth (2004). Moreover, project-​based operations of NGOs that rely on government funding might create ruptures in women’s rights activists’ movements because it sets out the lifespan only within the budget allowance (Grau, 2016). Although not exactly the same, these issues echo the challenges of relying on funded organizations for North Korean women’s activism because they set the framework and agenda, leaving little room for autonomy or agency.

Language barriers Along with the financial constraints, my participants described limited English competence as a major barrier for activism: Ms A: ‘In fact, language is the biggest problem. There are many people who can’t take part in activism due to language. I really understand because they came without knowing any English and it’s difficult to learn English while settling down here [in the UK].’ Ms F: ‘For human life language, it’s the language that can communicate my thoughts, but it’s completely not working so it’s frustrating. Because I can’t speak English, I have difficulty conveying my thoughts for others to understand.’ Ms K: ‘We don’t know English, that’s most regrettable. We North Koreans know about human rights issues and can talk to each other 125

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about what it was like living in North Korea. We want to express our views about North Korea concisely and articulately to people around the world, but we can’t so that’s most regrettable.’ In harmony with these problems, Halliday (1978) argues that language as ‘social semiotic’ is a vital instrument for meaning-​making and interactions between social actors. Thus, language plays a critical function in the construction of collective meaning by enabling people to communicate effectively with others (Passy and Monsch, 2020). Language is also crucial in unpacking and challenging dominant ideologies (Johnston and Swanson, 2006). For instance, through her analysis of the English reform movement, Mallinson (2017) demonstrates the revolutionary potential of language, subverting the male dominance pervasive in our language and achieving gender-​egalitarian discourse: for instance, contemporary trends shifting away from generic uses of he and man and using the phrase he or she (or the more progressive version, she or he), or the gender-​neutral singular they. Efficacious communications within a political movement are salient because activists need to clearly transmit the messages they wish to convey to others, in order to have a transformative impact, as stressed by Costa et al (2021). Hence, communication is a foundational source of power and counteractive power (Castells, 2007). Thus, a lack of English competence restricts North Korean female refugees’ capacity to sustain their activism in a transformative manner, as well as their ability to participate in the first place.

Tactics and strategies Activist leaders who fight for social justice need to be strategic about how they pursue their agenda, especially when dealing with adversarial situations and the resistance they encounter (Ryan, 2016). Tactics and strategies can vary, depending on which country they are located in, their personal experiences and their educational levels. Geographical location has particular implications for language, as illustrated by the narratives of North Korean women activists based in the UK.

Learning English To tackle the clearly identified challenge posed by the language barrier, the lead activist has taught herself English, which has unequivocally contributed to the longevity of her human rights activism: ‘When I started, I didn’t know English so learning English was my first strategy.’ Not surprisingly, many studies have recognized the centrality of communication in global activism (Bennet, 2003; Stein et al, 2012; Costa et al, 2021). Learning English has enabled Ms A to speak to her anglophone audience directly 126

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without needing to rely on an interpreter, which would limit her work. Being able to read, speak and write English has meant that she is able to communicate directly with an external audience, both verbally and through written formats, allowing her to reach wider audiences. Considering the status of English as an international language, her competence in English is even more significant. Validating this, Snaije (2016) argues that translation is political activism and therefore ‘it matters that voices and stories from other places are made available to English [speakers]’. In this way, language and translation can function as a site of resistance and social transformation (Baker, 2013).

Studying and educating oneself continuously As well as having taught herself English, ongoing learning and education have become one of the main tactics adopted by Ms A. Extant research has documented learning and knowledge production through activist praxis, rather than through textbook education (Ollis, 2011; Choudry, 2020; Costa et al, 2021). Interactions with other activists in a highly politicized environment lead people to become critically aware of the injustices others face, while also encouraging them ‘not to be afraid’ and to learn the vital importance of ‘speaking out’ in an effective manner (Costa et al, 2021, p 224). In addition, social movement activists obtain a wide range of knowledge and skills, from more heightened cognisance of government systems and politics to the communication and practical skills that are key to activism, such as how to engage with the media and organize events (Ollis, 2011). However, few discuss the role of proactive learning and continuous development as part of the strategies for activist movements, and Ms A’s narrative highlights the important role of these in her campaign: Ms A:

Interviewer:

The second strategy was studying. At first, it was hard. It was hard because I didn’t have networks, and at some point I realized that I have to learn and if I don’t learn, I can’t do this because on the Internet people asked me questions like how to solve the problem, how to approach society, and because I had so many things that I didn’t know, I had to study. I’m still studying and, once I started studying, I was able to see alternative routes. I could see the possibilities of networks, and I used to advocate that the Chinese Government must stop the forceful repatriation of North Koreans, but my boundary has expanded further to pursue stateless persons’ problems. How do you study? 127

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Ms A:

There are many books on North Korea. When I look at books on North Korea, there are aspects that I didn’t know because what the North Korean government teaches its people is fixed, so we only know about those aspects. So I learn by looking at theses and when I look at theses, there are some points that are incorrect so I’ve taught myself a lot. Also, I’ve learnt a lot about not only North Korea but the socialist system and human rights, refugees and immigrants … Refugees or immigrants, especially women, without learning, can’t move forward a single step. We learn for ourselves, not for a high status. Once we learn, we learn about ourselves and then in fact we can learn about society.

Ms A’s narrative suggests that purposeful learning –​about the society activists are dealing with, and the relevant political system and human rights –​is essential in successful activism, on top of the knowledge obtained through their lived experiences. In fact, her account evinces the pivotal role of intellectual learning in elevating political activism to the next level and creating a viable movement in the longer term, as well as coming up with practical solutions for the marginalized. Ollis (2008) also notes the importance of learning for the women’s movement through consciousness raising about their oppressed situations as a collective problem, by situating individuals within society and taking action to change oppressive systems. In addition, learning through intergenerational knowledge sharing is pivotal in addressing systemic injustice and oppression, while simultaneously stressing the criticality of knowledge produced through social movements that challenge dominant ideologies (Choudry, 2020). Historical knowledge is instrumental for activists to engage with existing materials that are vital in subverting the mainstream treatment of the oppressed, such as refugees. Built on knowledge of a past example regarding Russian refugees, Ms A is working on the idea of a ‘Nansen Passport’ as a way of resolving an issue faced by North Korean refugees, especially women and children: Ms A: ‘[S]ince North Korea hasn’t collapsed and there aren’t many ways to get inside North Korea, we have an obligation to save those outside North Korea first. So I’m addressing it as stateless people, and temporary passports, because when we try to save them in China, because they don’t have passports themselves, they can’t cross borders like other refugees. If they cross the borders, it’s also dangerous because they’re not accepted as refugees, so we’ve asked whether the UN could issue temporary passports because there is a precedent. When 128

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there were a lot of refugees from Russia, Norway’s Nansen created the ‘Nansen Passport’3 and gave them this temporary passport. So many refugees were able to enter Europe. This kind of system can be repeated because in the case of North Koreans [in China], they’re stateless people because they can’t [don’t] have passports.4 Now the Myanmar problem has erupted and the UN and the UK are taking many of them. However, in the case of North Korea, the world says human rights in North Korea are poor, but in reality there aren’t many countries that are willing to accept North Koreans as refugees. The UK tells those who come to this country to go to South Korea, but South Korea doesn’t agree to take all the defector refugees. At the beginning, we were happy when the UN in the USA announced the North Korean resolution, but that was when we were naive (laughs). As I study human rights activism, I think this is having a worse effect on us. Once or twice a year it just announces like this and that’s the end … In fact, it’s the global society that has given the opportunity for North Korea to continuously make nuclear missiles and threaten international society … The UN has made North Korea join its Council but regarding the North Korean refugee problem, it calls them potentially South Koreans, following South Korea’s Constitution. However, China regards North Korean defectors as North Korean illegal migrants not South Koreans, and forcibly repatriates them to the North. If the South Korean Constitution treats all North Koreans inside North Korea as South Koreans, then all the people from North Korea would become refugees, but the UN doesn’t realize its seriousness and global society doesn’t talk about the North Korean refugee issue.’ The question of North Korean refugee status is complicated and requires some clarification. As stated by the UNHCR (2016), there were a few countries that had accepted North Korean refugees by 2015, which included: the UK (608), Canada (126), Germany (101), Russia (72), the Netherlands (56), Belgium (46), Australia (26) and the United States (19). Although the actual figures were higher for some countries, for example there were approximately 1,000 North Koreans in the UK by 2014 (ONS, 2015) and 225 in the US by 2017 (Robinson, 2019), the overall numbers taken by these countries are relatively small. As pointed out by Ms A, many countries, even including those who have taken North Korean refugees, are reluctant to accept them for a multitude of complex legal, attitudinal and discriminatory reasons. According to Song and Bell (2018), the UK is one of the most sought-​ after destinations for North Korean asylum seekers. However, the UK Home Office is unwilling to grant them refugee status because it struggles to distinguish ‘genuine’ DPRK asylum seekers from those who have already 129

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sought asylum in South Korea and acquired South Korean citizenship, as well as ethnic Korean Chinese citizens posing as North Koreans. Indeed, the institute for Peace and Unification Studies found that, in 2007, 258 out of 415 North Korean asylum applicants in the UK were suspected of being Chinese nationals, known as chosonjok (Song and Bell, 2018). Some of my participants raised similar concerns about these ‘bogus’ refugee claims made by chosonjok, because they prevented authentic North Koreans from being accepted as refugees. Furthermore, the USA has been criticized for failing to do more for North Korean refugees, with its stringent approach towards providing refugee status to them (  Ji, 2011; Robinson, 2019). Cohen (2011) identifies three obstacles that have led to only a small number of DPRK refugees in the USA. North Koreans are deemed ineligible for refugee status in the United States because of the South Korean constitution that stipulates their rights to ROK citizenship; this legal obstacle leads to the attitudinal barrier that North Korean refugees ‘belong in South Korea’. On top of this, the long delays, from six months to two years, in processing refugee claims encourage the withdrawal of their applications, as illustrated by 107 case withdrawals during the period 2004–​10 (Cohen, 2011). Jung et al (2017) similarly observe the Australian government’s hard line on granting asylum to North Koreans arriving from South Korea, owing to the Korean Constitution. Notwithstanding its legal obligation to offer diplomatic protection to North Korean refugees, in reality the ROK government is unenthusiastic about accepting them and makes an implicit effort not to encourage their defection to South Korea. Lankov (2004) suggests a number of interrelated grounds for this: firstly, diplomatic relations with China, which does not want to become a transition zone for those heading towards the ROK; secondly, the Seoul government’s tacit scepticism about the successful assimilation of the majority of uneducated North Korean refugees into South Korean society; thirdly, its endeavour to avoid destabilizing North Korea in the event of a large exodus; and fourthly, its anxiety over ethnic Korean Chinese people’s attempts to pose as North Koreans to gain citizenship. The ROK’s disinclination is also mirrored in the changing discourse and policies around North Korean defectors, exemplified by the 1997 ‘Act on the Protection and Settlement Support of the Residents Escaping from North Korea’ (Choi, 2018, p 87). This is vastly different from the heroic treatment of the mostly elite political asylum seekers during the period 1962–​93 (p 82). Therefore, although in theory North Korean escapees are protected by South Korean law, in reality its protection is not readily available to them. In conjunction with this, the main obstacle for North Koreans is China’s treatment of them, along with its geographical proximity to the DPRK, which creates a double barrier for them to reach safer countries. Hence, the options available to them are extremely limited, and unless international 130

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protection is offered using means such as a temporary passport, as suggested by Ms A, their human rights will continue to hang by a thread. The inadequacy of superficial gestures made by international organizations, such as the UN, in addressing the situation of North Korean forced migrants is expressed by Ms A: ‘People talk about North Korean political prison camps, but they don’t care about those who are forcibly repatriated and imprisoned in political prisons. As a result, many people can’t receive the help of international society and die meaninglessly while moving back and forth from China to North Korea, and vice versa. The Nansen Passport was for those who didn’t have a state, and the reason I mentioned it is because North Koreans are stateless people who don’t have the right to own passports. I’ve mentioned this to a British MP, UN Commissioner Michael Kirby, who produced a UN North Korean human rights report, and to other NGOs. There has been no concrete progress so far, but I think it is the beginning. During the COVID-​19 pandemic, China built 5,000 kilometres of barbed wire fence like the Great Wall to block the routes to third countries, so it has become difficult for North Korean refugees to go to third countries as well as facing the danger of repatriation, and people can’t leave North Korea. But, if a passport exists that can be used in a critical situation, they can go to a third country from China safely.’ However, in reality, issuing a visa similar to the ‘Nansen Passport’ would be difficult because, constitutionally, North Korean defectors belong to South Korea, as discussed previously. The UK or international society would be reluctant to accept them as refugees for that reason. I asked Ms A to consider how she would overcome such obstacles, to which she responded in the following way: ‘You’ve made a very important point. As I mentioned earlier, there are many aspects that are illogical in international society. The ROK’s Constitution only stipulates North Koreans within the Korean peninsula as South Koreans, and thus it doesn’t apply to those who have left North Korea. And North Korea has joined the UN, like South Korea, therefore in reality the UN should distinguish between North and South Korea. If international society argues that North Korean citizens legally belong to South Korea, then it should expel North Korea from the UN and treat all the problems relating to the Korean peninsula as those of the ROK, but it still separates the two. Another issue is that North Koreans, unlike South Koreans, can’t have passports from birth, so they’re stateless. That’s why, even after 131

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leaving China, they can’t move to other countries like other refugees because they don’t have passports and face the danger of repatriation to the North. A bigger problem is that researchers in international society can’t study North Korea’s Juche ideology properly, and because international society doesn’t know North Korean society precisely, it can’t figure out directions to protect North Korean refugees. I’m going to continue studying this problem.’ Uncompromising determination is noticeable in Ms A’s account, which also demonstrates her understanding of the paradoxes pervading the international community’s approach towards handling North Korean human rights issues and the refugee crisis. As discussed in Chapter 3, the self-​interest of different nation-​states and geopolitics have a significant influence on how North Korean human rights are dealt with, and have resulted in a lack of progress in real terms in offering feasible protection to North Korean people. In this respect, the role of defector activists is critical to advancing this agenda. As stated by Jesson and Newman (2004, p 261), learning enables activists to develop skills to solve problems through an understanding of existing social structures and the assumptions that limit our view of the world. This suggests that not only is existing knowledge useful in current activism, but also that there is the potentiality to develop and expand it to apply to a different context, as illustrated by Ms A’s narrative.

Building networks Earlier, Ms A mentioned a lack of funding, mainly as the result of her deliberate act of opting out from accepting financial support from organizations. In this challenging environment, networking or building networks is critical, especially as a mechanism to offset the lack of financial resources: Interviewer: Ms A:

Do you have people who have created networks with you at the moment? Yes, there are many. When I started, I felt at a loss. But now I have many connections. Human rights are something that take lifetimes over different generations and I want to establish hard foundations so that, when I hand it over to the next generation, they will have established connections. If I run hard, they can do the activism without running like me … We are rather different from other refugees. Other refugees came here [to the UK] in the ‘60s and ‘70s, so they have established themselves. But in our case we’re like newborns, really 132

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Interviewer: Ms A:

like newborns, so the first part of our journey will be hard, but if we work on building up … How do you work with those networks? First of all, I’m currently networking with secondary schools. There are many different career paths and job opportunities for students … They invite one person in the fields of politics, economics and culture and human rights as a guest speaker, so I’ve done that … Another network is Amnesty International. There are many Amnesties in local areas, so I have networks with them. And I have a network with women’s human rights organizations within the UN. Also, recently many British women’s organizations have started to show an interest. I’m raising awareness of issues faced by North Korean women and children by working together with UN women’s organizations and other NGOs in the UK. The methods I use are to write reports or poems, or I take part verbally … My radio programmes provide a summary of the real lives of defectors in Europe and human rights events, and we send these to North Korea once a week. To put it simply, it’s a broadcast that informs North Korean people of the importance of information, and we work with Free Asia Broadcasting in the US. I also have connections with Geneva and the British Parliament, so my networks are expanding.

Van Dijk (2006, p 20) defines a network as a ‘collection of links between elements of a unit’, whose characteristics include a group or system linked together by interconnected and complex connections and nodes. Networks are constellations of organizations interconnected through communications that develop and expand (Castells, 1996). The metaphor of the rhizome deployed by Deleuze and Guattari (1980) effectively depicts this horizontal organizational structure. The communication and actions of activist networks entail forming relationships, mobilizing resources and exchanging information (Castells, 1996; Bennett, 2003). Activists think strategically about how to develop and share communication capacity, and how transnational communication might connect the local and the global (Stein et al, 2012). Ms A’s use of networks and building networks are pivotal to her activism as an alternative means of mobilizing resources while widening communication platforms. However, for Ms A, networking as a strategy encompasses the much more careful and tactical construction of working relationships, as well as the binary mechanism of inclusion and exclusion 133

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(Castells, 2007), based on the principle of ‘truthful’ activism, untainted by temptation or partisan politics: ‘There are universities in the UK that teach North Korean human rights and Korean Studies. But every time the ROK government changes, the UK universities that teach Korean Studies also move according to the changes in the Korean government … When I look at the system, those who run Korean Studies receive funding from South Korea, not from Europe, and they change, depending on Korean politics. Thus, I’ve severed many networks with universities because, where human rights are concerned, we must face uncomfortable truths and ensure that there are no regrets in the future. Even if it seems that I need those networks, we mustn’t regret it later when we know the truth. But many people, many Koreans, are fearful of uncomfortable truth … There are North Korean human rights activists who describe human rights in a too scary way; for instance, that the regime puts people into a blast furnace or pours hot oil over them. But we don’t need to use such exaggerated descriptions because, even if we just spoke about how we actually lived, that in itself is shocking for them because they’ve never had to live such a life. I’m not showing off, but the reason I’ve been able to do human rights activism for a long time is probably because I’ve spoken about human rights as they are without embellishing them.’ As discussed in the previous chapter, fabrications or exaggerated stories of North Korean defectors’ lives have raised doubts about the credibility of testimonies. Consistent with this, Ms A is critical of such cases. Furthermore, maintaining integrity and ‘truthfulness’ without falling under the political sways of particular institutions –​even if they provide networking opportunities –​is a key feature of her activism.

Looking to the future Significance of North Korean women’s rights and the voices of defector activists Ms A insists that women’s rights are key in assessing the status of human rights within a country, as well as for the economic, social and political success of that country: ‘The reason I still raise my voice about women’s human rights is that these are the sense of value that assesses a country’s human rights. We can judge that country’s politics, economy and culture through women’s human rights. That’s why I continue to talk about female human rights issues … The reason I think women’s rights are important 134

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is because women are the ones who grow the future … If mothers educate their children in the wrong way, those children could go the wrong way when they get older, so I think women are the future … If you look at defectors in South Korea, 80 per cent are women and they earn money to save their families in North Korea, bring out their children and educate them in new environments, and women in North Korea have begun to trade using the money these women send. By doing so, they also develop their children’s future. Therefore, I see women as very important … Society is run by women a lot. Also, due to women, nowadays children in North Korea can live in their homes not as orphans … All of these are among the many roles that mothers play. Secondly, when North Korea collapses in the future, North Korean society’s economic and cultural levels can be seen through women.’ In line with Ms A’s perspective, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) (2019), using a cross-​country analysis of correlations between the protection of women’s economic and social rights, health improvement and sustainable development, underscores that better protection of women’s rights has beneficial outcomes for a nation-​state in terms of health, along with social, economic and political development. Founded on their analysis, researchers have stated that women’s human rights are not solely an issue for women, but are inextricably linked to a country’s wider development (BMJ, 2019). In the Sustainable Development Goals, the UN (n.d.) similarly underlines that gender equality as a fundamental human right is key to the peaceful, prosperous and sustainable development of a nation-​state through enhanced women’s education and political leadership. Additionally, voluminous feminist writings have documented the essential role that women play in nation-​ building through their variegated roles as mothers, leaders and educators (Benard et al, 2008; Batliwala, 2010; Ochiai, 2013; Poltera, 2019; Abioye and Nyawo, 2020; Katja and Michael, 2020). In particular, women’s roles in educating their children are crucial to the future of a nation (Katja and Michael, 2020), consistent with Ms A’s view. Moreover, women can play a vital role in mobilizing other women and men to address socio-​cultural, economic and political issues pertinent to a particular society, and notably in achieving justice and human rights for all under an oppressive government (Batliwala, 2010). Ms A’s narrative also highlights the important role played by North Korean women defectors in South Korea via sending remittances to the North, thereby enabling other women to invest in trades and in educating their children. Therefore, protecting North Korean women’s rights is critical: Ms A: ‘North Korean defectors are performing non-​violent resistance. Since the 1990s, we have left North Korea and escaped again after 135

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being forcibly repatriated. This is all non-​violent resistance … Even inside North Korea changes have taken place, like Jangmadang. People watch foreign media secretly, even though the government doesn’t allow it. This is a form of non-​violent resistance. From this year, Kim Jong Un has declared the Arduous March to reform society, but this is different from the 1990s Arduous March. The current Arduous March is literally a thought reform … Over the last 20 years, people have lived with democratic minds by doing trades in Jangmadang and eating what they want to eat, even though they live in a communist society. When Kim Jong Un looks at it, it’s difficult to sustain the country like this. So, to the international community he’s announced that we’re facing famine and going through the Arduous March, but inside North Korea the people’s thought reform has started.’ For Ms A, non-​violent resistance against the regime constitutes a wide array of actions taken by ordinary people, from escaping the country –​even after numerous repatriations and imprisonments –​to gaining access to media from other countries, such as South Korean dramas, together with living to the full, as discussed earlier. This suggests that every facet of North Korean people’s behaviours and acts has the potential to generate counter-​power movements. Furthermore, consonant with Ms A’s narrative, many researchers have examined the rise of the informal economy since the economic crisis of the 1990s and its implications for North Korean society (Jung and Dalton, 2006; Joo, 2010; Park, 2011; Haggard and Noland, 2012; Lankov and Kim, 2014; Schwekendiek and Mercier, 2016). The rise of the shadow economy has resulted in a de facto capitalist domination of the market system in the DPRK, despite the continual communist propaganda from the government. This ongoing propaganda and regular crackdowns on ‘illegal’ economic activities in Jangmadang are demonstrative of the regime’s insecurity. Echoing Ms A’s statement, in April 2021, Kim Jong Un publicly announced another economic crisis and ‘Arduous March’ at a ruling Workers’ Party of Korea conference (Yoon, 2021). Consistent with Ms A’s account, Yoon suggests that this might be another attempt by the leader to tighten the government’s grip on the country’s people and their lives. He is exploiting the COVID-​19 pandemic by completely closing off North Korea’s borders and thus having complete control over the distribution of food and other supplies, while preventing the infiltration of foreign information into the country (see also Choe, 2020). It is arguable that the Kim Jong Un regime’s tactics are a manifestation of the deeply sedimented insecurity of the government and its anxiety about the perceived threat of the growing capitalist economy and porous borders open to ‘invasion’ by foreign information. As discussed in Chapter 1, the spectacle of blowing up the joint liaison office with the ROK in Kaesong in June 2020 (Berlinger et al, 2020) is a clear indication of how 136

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alarmed the ruling elite is by defector activism and the penetration of outside information by means of balloons sent by activists. With a complete lack of grassroots civil movements inside the DPRK (Hosaniak, 2019), the acts of defectors are crucial in informing the world about the situation inside the country and prompting the North Korean people to subvert the status quo: Interviewer: Ms K:

How do you think North Korean human rights issues can be resolved? What would be the solution? Putting on a lot of external pressure … Those who know English proactively lead human rights issues and continuously inform the world about North Korean human rights issues. I think that’s the only method: to inform not just once, but continuously and without stopping.

Reflecting her earlier accounts, Ms K sees helping people to gain a critical understanding of their oppressed reality by informing them about human rights abuses committed by the ruling class as the best way of achieving improvement in their lives, rather than regime change: Interviewer: Ms K:

At present, under Kim Jong Un’s rule, in what direction do you think North Korean human rights and women’s rights would go? North Korea is just like the old days, without change … because they came down from his grandfather’s time. We have to show to North Korean people that the world goes round like this so they can be awakened, and other people can be changed. In my view, awakening North Korean people is important, rather than relying on the North Korean regime. As for changing the regime, they’ve passed it down for three generations and it’s a dictatorship, so they will carry on like that, I think it’s better for North Korean people to be awakened to find their own lives.

Similarly to Ms K’s view, Denney et al (2017) and Green and Denney (2017) have argued that, despite some appearance of shifts in North Korean society since the inception of Kim Jong Un, no real changes have taken place with regard to the re-​deployment of ‘old’ policies. This includes the persistence of gender inequality and the subordinated social position of women, in spite of their established breadwinner role (Hosaniak, 2013; Cho et al, 2020). In that sense, Ms K’s proposition to bring changes from within through continuous defector activism seems to make logical sense. As also discussed 137

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above, the Kim Jong Un regime is intimidated by defector activism and the availability of foreign information to ordinary North Koreans: Ms A: ‘North Korean dictators are fearful now so they suppress the foreign media … People like us [North Korean defectors], if our voice dies, if there is no voice like us, then there is no future … The cases of our survivors, the reason why the voices of survivors are important, even though the voices of the UN or some governments are important and what they report is important, is because we can teach real experiences, rather than governments or the UN. Our voices are the real ones.’ Despite accusations of false testimonies presented by some, it is noteworthy that, on the whole, the stories of life in North Korea told by defectors are accurate in identifying core human rights violations. Hence, the voices and actions of defectors are the essential tool for shaping North Korea’s future. As stressed by Ms A, even though international bodies, such as the UN, are important in tackling the DPRK’s human rights violations, only those who have lived experiences under the regime have the ‘authentic’ voice and experiential knowledge that can inform the work of national and international organizations. In tune with the narratives of these women activists, achieving human rights has historically been a gradual process not a rapid one, and grassroots movements are essential, as articulated by Eade and Macleod (2011, p 61): Human rights, as we have said earlier, have to be claimed from below in order for a culture of rights to take root. An important role for international cooperation –​not just aid agencies, but also scholars and activists –​is therefore to support grassroots and civil society organisations to articulate and press for their rights and to make sure that their interests are properly addressed in any reparations, transitional justice systems and, perhaps most important in terms of ‘positive’ and sustainable peace, the truthful recording of their history.

Conclusion This chapter has examined North Korean women’s human rights activism, from transitions in the subject positions of activists, to the challenges posed by their activism, tactics and strategies, and ending with the salience of defectors’ voices in the subversive movement against the DPRK dictatorship. Women become involved in activism because they are driven by their direct understanding of the human rights violations and oppression faced by North Korean women (and children and men), alongside an altruistic sense of responsibility for others, a sense of guilt and their relationships with the lead 138

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activist. However, they face difficulties in their activism, stemming from shame and pain carried from the past, the fear of reprisals by the regime, a lack of finances, and the language barrier. To overcome these obstacles, the lead activist has adopted different tactics and strategies, from learning English to networking with carefully selected groups and organizations. What has emerged from this examination is the major role that women play in current North Korean society, and will continue to play in its future. Women stand firm in shouldering a vital role in North Korea as mothers, traders, employees and family providers, having contributed significantly to the DPRK’s economy. The role of North Korean women, including those who are defectors, is particularly critical for effecting future social changes in the DPRK and for addressing North Korean women’s human rights, notwithstanding that this might take generations of campaigning, fighting and struggling. Notes 1

2

I have used the term ‘victims’ with a caveat. By using this term, I do not intend to depict the experiences of activists as a linear and simplistic, seamless journey from one subject position to another. In fact, as I progressed further into my research, I began to realize that the boundaries between their multiple subject positions were not clear-​cut, and that their wounds and traumas continued to haunt their lives in many ways. However, I have used this term with the support of the participants themselves, as discussed in the previous chapter. Despite controversy and the potential danger, by using this term I seek to highlight the structural forces of the violent DPRK regime and global border security policy, which have caused the ‘illegitimate’ border-​crossings of North Korean women in the first place and these regimes’ collective failure to protect them from inhumane treatment. This includes women who ‘voluntarily’ arrange their own smuggling to China, as the whole situation would have not existed without systemic state violence and neglect. At the same time, their victimhood does not indicate passivity or a lack of agency. As argued by Yuval-​Davis et al (2019), a lack of legal status or civil rights does not mean the absence of subjectivity or agency to resist. In agreement with this, I aim to illuminate North Korean female activists’ resilience and capacity to overcome extreme circumstances, as well as their humanity in working towards improving other people’s lives, building on their own suffering and pain. Fahy (2019) notes that religious repression in North Korea began at the time of the Korean War as part of the military campaign. During the War, 50 priests and 60 pastors were killed, and 40,000 Christians fled to the ROK. Kim Il Sung came from a religious family, with his maternal grandfather being a minister and his father being educated in a missionary school, and he was raised in a Protestant Christian family. However, after the War, Kim Il Sung claimed that communism could not progress with religious believers and he developed policies that targeted their elimination. All religious people were labelled as counter-​revolutionary and classified as hostile in its Songbun. However, Baek (2016) reports that Christian organizations are allowed to enter North Korea to provide humanitarian aid despite the regime’s hostility towards Christianity, and missionaries use these opportunities to smuggle audio-​Bibles loaded onto USB drives into the DPRK. Suki Kim’s book (2014), based on her experience of teaching English at an elite university in Pyongyang, also demonstrates that Christian organizations and missionaries are allowed to undertake humanitarian and educational work in North Korea. 139

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3

4

As observed in the narratives of my participants, Christian missionaries additionally play an influential role and risk their lives to help those who have escaped the regime by providing support in clandestine ways, such as offering shelter, food and clothing, as well as aiding them to seek asylum in safe countries. This has caused a crackdown on South Korean Christian missionaries by the Chinese government in recent years (Ha, 2019). Resonating with this, Jung (2020) highlights the affiliation of approximately 80 per cent of North Korean refugees entering South Korea with Protestant churches, indicating their encounters with Christianity during their stay in China. According to Nansen’s biographer, Huntford (1997), the eponymous passport was not a creation of Fridtjof Nansen, but of Edouard Frick, a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Frick, at the crux of nearly a million Russian refugees in Europe who fled Lenin’s Communist regime in 1921, proposed the idea of issuing an identity document for those who neither had the protection of their own state nor legal status as foreigners. Regardless of Nansen’s involvement, Frick named it the ‘Nansen Passport’. Huntford notes that Nansen’s approach to Russian refugees was in fact lukewarm, without any real understanding of the suffering caused by their exile. According to a KINU White Paper (Lee et al, 2020), North Korea only issues passports to people of special rank –​including diplomats, public officials, people working overseas and students studying overseas, and it is not common for a general resident to receive a passport. Although people travelling abroad, for example, to visit relatives, are issued with traveller passports, they are limited to those who are visiting their relatives in China with an invitation from China, validated by a manager of an organization (Lee et al, 2020).

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Altruistic Political Imagination In this chapter, I move on to a theorization of the motivations behind activism, drawing on the narratives of women activists examined in Chapter 4. As discussed there, numerous studies have explored the driving forces behind various social movements and cases of political activism. Nonetheless, there is a dearth of theorization founded on their empirical data. This is particularly the case for extant studies on North Korean women defectors’ experiences, which are largely drawn from their oral testimonies, and is due to a lack of research on women’s activism. Given this lack, social theories to encapsulate their activism based on empirical data is vital, especially to guide future research as an explanatory tool. Chibucos et al (2004, p 1) explain theorizing as ‘the process of systematically developing and organizing ideas to explain phenomena’ by connecting the concrete findings from empirical data with abstract concepts. Building on this, the theory that I develop in this chapter is an attempt to construct a conceptual framework that may be applicable to similar types of studies in the future, while forming the basis of further debate and development. However, it is not an attempt to make an overarching claim about political activism and its motivations. The narratives of women activists presented in this book have highlighted the important roles of critical awakening, a sense of responsibility, guilt and moral conscience, reciprocity and caring for others, as well as an altruistic vision for others, all as driving forces for their activism. These findings highlight two major interrelated characteristics: relational and future-​oriented dimensions. Founded on these, I present a new theoretical concept that I call ‘Altruistic Political Imagination’ (API), which seeks to describe North Korean women’s human rights activism more aptly than existing concepts around imagination and altruism. This framework is an ongoing development built on my previous work on North Korean human rights activism (Lim, 2021). Borrowing from Goodson (2010), Collins and Stockton (2018, p 3) present theories as stories, which ‘attempt to explain phenomena logically and meaningfully, often following narrative structures’. Consistent with this, 150

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I interweave different components emerging from the data into a narrative form to create a coherent story. I begin with a thorough examination of the role of imagination in human life, engaging with philosophical, psychological and sociological perspectives, such as those of Kant, Bachelard, Sartre, Bloch and Appadurai. In the next section, I discuss phenomenological perspectives on human action and the significance of social relations with others in constructing a meaningful life for human beings. Alongside this, altruism forms an inseparable part of activism. Thus, I examine the notion of altruism in depth, along with its various meanings and contentious issues, engaging with a wide range of scholarly works. While I acknowledge the relevance and usefulness of the concepts around altruism, especially ‘Altruism Born of Suffering’ by Staub and Vollhardt (2008), in which empathy is a central facet, I argue for the need to develop a concept in which imaginary and future-​oriented aspects are more explicitly articulated in order to explain North Korean women activists’ motivation for engaging in their activism.

Imagination The term ‘imagination’ originates from the Latin imaginatio, derived from imaginem, a combination of imago (image or picture) and imitatio (imitation). It refers to a mental faculty to form internal images of external objects through copying or mimicking (Costelloe, 2017). More contemporary definitions have developed beyond this mimetic meaning; for example, the Merriam-​Webster Online Dictionary defines it as ‘the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality’. The Oxford English Dictionary similarly refers to imagination as: ‘the power or capacity to form internal images or ideas of objects and situations not actually present to the senses, including remembered objects and situations, and those constructed by mentally combining or projecting images of previously experienced qualities, objects, and situations’ and ‘the mental consideration of future or potential actions or events’. Therefore, imagination enables individuals to enter a realm of possibilities (Illouz, 2009). Sartre (1940) treats imagination as an inextricable component of consciousness; thus, it is a unique characteristic of human perceptual experiences, not shared by other creatures (Webber, 2020). For Sartre, it is through imagination that people give meaning to objects that do not have innate meanings. Hume differentiates the notion of imagination into two facets, ‘its “mimetic” power to copy or represent and its “productive” power to combine ideas and create new ones’ (Costello, 2017, p 1). In this regard, Hume’s concept of imagination has creative capacity. Similar to Hume to some extent, Jung (1997) distinguishes imagination from fantasy. While the latter is seen 151

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as phantasmagorical and ephemeral images, for Jung imagination brings the unconscious closer to the conscious through ‘introspection for observing the stream of interior images’ and the changes taking place in them (Jung, 1997, p 154). Here, active imagination is vital for turning a wounded or disturbed mental condition into a positive state. From Jung’s psychoanalytical perspective, the potentiality of active imagination as a healing tool lies deeper than our conscious level. Thus, the act of imagination as an ‘active, purposeful creation’ begins at an unconscious level, through which the fragmented condition of an individual can be healed, to arrive at a more unified self (Jung, 1997, p 145). In the context of the experiences of North Korean women activists, this healing capacity of imagination as a pathway or transformative instrument is critical. In addition, two characteristics are imperative with specific reference to their experiences: future-​oriented and relational aspects, which will be discussed later. Based on this, I define imagination as: The cognitive act or process of constructing a mental image that is absent in that moment, or not directly available to the individual in reality, and which enables them to visualize the transformation of something that is seemingly impossible at present into something that will be possible in future, while also enabling them to comprehend others’ emotions. This conceptualization therefore encompasses both transformative and empathetic potentialities. As proposed by Appadurai (1996, 2000), imagination has become a common feature for ordinary people in contemporary society as an essential component of their (post)modern subjectivity. This contrasts with the premodern era, where imagination was tethered to myth and ritual or seen as the faculty of the aesthetic practice of a privileged minority. For Appadurai (1996), this is a product of the increased global movement of people, which has spawned their capacity to imagine better lives outside their nation-​states. Imagination continues to play a salient role in the minds of people in diaspora, creating meanings and identity through the juxtaposition of their past, present and future lives (Appadurai, 1996; Orgad, 2012). Resonating with studies around migration and emotions (Baldassar, 2008; Skrbis, 2008; Wise and Velayutham, 2017), the imagination is intertwined with emotions and feelings, which can be contradictory and messy (Appadurai, 1996; Illouz, 2009), especially for refugees and asylum seekers (Orgad, 2012). Challenging the dichotomous sequestration of the previous life as a nightmare versus the new life as a dream, Orgad (2012, p 133) draws our attention to the ambivalent characteristics of imagination for refugees, 152

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emphasizing ‘ambivalence, uncertainty and complexity –​which are the crux of everyday life and the experience of migration’. Warnock (1976, 1994) provides an insightful exploration of imagination, looking at its association with perception, phenomenology, identity and time, and the role of imagination in the future and human life. In Warnock’s (1994, p 2) conceptual framework, imagination ‘enables us to think about things that are absent, including things which no longer exist or do not yet exist. It is thus only through imagination that a man [sic] has a concept of himself as having a history which is not yet finished.’ In this sense, without imagination, human beings would have no understanding of past, present, and future, an understanding which offers the possibility of continuity in their lives. Consonant with Warnock, Andrews (2014) stresses the interconnected relations between these temporalities. Individuals constantly revisit their past in association with their present circumstances, which consequently influences and reshapes their desires for and visions of the future (Andrews, 2014). An individual’s capacity to envision the future constitutes the principal facet of a collective action aiming to challenge the status quo, as eloquently captured by Harrington (1999, p 274): ‘If we are to triumph we must imagine the future to plan for the present.’ Sartre (1940, p 155) suggests that imagination offers ‘an escape from worldly constraints’, and an alternative version of the world. In that sense, imagination is vital in the development of freedom within the individual. For Sartre, a project in individual perception refers to ‘an orientation towards a goal’, which is future-​oriented and thus requires the capacity to imagine (Webber, 2020, p 13). However, Geniusas (2015) takes a critical stance on Sartre’s notion because it highlights imagination’s utopian and escapist tendency, and therefore has limitations in its capacity to be a transformative tool in achieving freedom. By contrast, Bachelard and Ricoeur provide more meaningful concepts, which include the possibility of action. Bachelard’s (1969 [1958], 1988) concept of imagination firmly establishes it as ‘a creative faculty of the mind’, which entails a moral commitment to guide human life (Kaplan, 1972, p 160). For Bachelard (1969 [1958], p xxxiv), ‘the imagination is a major power of human nature’. Bachelard (1969 [1958], 1988) opposes the prevalent definition of imagination as the faculty that forms images. Instead, he argues that imagination ‘deforms what we perceive; it is, above all, the faculty that frees us from immediate images and changes them’ (1988, p 1). For Bachelard, the central tenet of imagination lies in its capacity to move and spur action; it is not limited to representation: ‘imagination is primarily a kind of spiritual mobility of the greatest, liveliest, and most exhilarating kind’ (1988, p 2). Consonant with Bachelard, Ricoeur (1976, 1978a, 1978b) considers imagination as having a projective capacity beyond its mimetic function. 153

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Hence, for Ricoeur (1976, p 126), there can be ‘no action without imagination’. Ricoeur suggests that imagination permeates our thoughts and conceptualizations, and is therefore part of a perceptual framework and not an alternative. In this, he differs from Hume (Taylor, 2006). According to Ricoeur, imagination not only enables the individual to escape reality, but also enables them to reinterpret and reconstitute their social world, and thus contributes ‘to the projection of new possibilities of redescribing the world’ (1978b, p 154). In his examination of Ricoeur’s reproductive and productive imagination, Geniusas (2015, p 225) distinguishes between the utopian and constitutive tendencies of imagination: If following the first tendency, one could liken an imaginative experience to a dream, then with the second tendency in mind, one could further say that the dream in question is not content to remain in a dreamlike state –​it strives to be realised. Imagination puts into question what presently exists, it provides the incentive to (re)constitute the subject’s socio-​historical reality. Thus, imagination potentially has immense force that could reshape the world (Geniusas, 2015). As expressed by Appadurai (1996 [1990], pp 7–​8), the imagination is not only a channel for escape but also a platform for collective action, built on a ‘community of sentiment’ that binds people together through shared imagination and feelings: It allows people to consider migration, resist state violence, seek social redress, and design new forms of civic association and collaboration, often across national boundaries … It is also the faculty through which collective patterns of dissent and new designs for collective life emerge. (Appadurai, 2000, p 6) In addition, collective imagination founded on selective memories allows people to connect the historical pathways of communities, from the past to the future (Border, 2010). Therefore, it is pivotal in shaping our approaches to the collective future and in bringing changes to the world (Harrington, 1999). In the sphere of politics, imagination is essential for individuals to critically assess existing social conditions and to create a new reality for their future (Czobor-​Lupp, 2014). As articulated by Arendt (2017 [1951]), protecting human dignity and rights from the atrocities of antisemitism, imperialism and totalitarianism requires different political ideologies and principles, as well as new political systems. Achieving this requires creative imagination with a transformative power that can subvert the existing social order (Bachelard, 1969 [1958], 1988; Ricoeur, 1976, 1978a, 1978b; Appadurai, 1996, 2000; Czobor-​Lupp, 2014; Geniusas, 2015). 154

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In harmony with the above, Bloch (1995) encapsulates the creative power of imagination in realizing a utopian dream. For Bloch (1995, p 75), hope is ‘the most important expectant emotion, the most authentic emotion of longing and is therefore the most human of all mental feelings’, and is only available to mankind. As a fundamental component of human consciousness, hope directs human actions to shape the future. The possibility of this imagined future becomes an impetus to act in realizing such a dream. Echoing this, Kleres and Wettergren (2017, p 508) propose that hope is essential in activism because it ‘manages fear and inspires action which in turn produces more hope’. Similarly, for Jasper (2011), hopeful anticipation of bringing a positive change to society is the greatest driver of social movements. He names hope as ‘moral batteries: the combination of positive and negative emotions that, through their contrast, help energise action’ (Jasper, 2011, p 291). Utopia, according to Bloch, is ‘an expression of hope’ and it provides potentiality for effecting the future (Levitas, 1990, p 14). Consistent with Bloch, Ricoeur (1976, p 25) depicts utopia as a blank canvas which enables a new vision to be created, predicated on the original meaning of utopia as ‘nowhere’, as introduced by Thomas More (1516): ‘From this “no-​place,” an exterior glance is cast on our reality, which suddenly looks strange, nothing more being taken for granted. The field of the possible is now opened beyond that of the actual, a field for alternative ways of living.’ For Bloch (1995), utopian aspirations are imperative for all freedom movements, and therefore imagination forms an integral facet of collective action. He differentiates abstract utopia from concrete utopia: the former is wishful thinking but with no will to bring about changes; the latter, by contrast, implies an achievable future that effects change. It is only concrete utopia that entails hope beyond the expression of desire in the realm of abstract utopia (Levitas, 1990).

Imagination, will and wilfulness As claimed by Bloch (1995), it is human activity that determines the choosing and actualizing of a possible future. La Boetie (2020 [1576], pp 40–​41) writes powerfully about the complicity and implication of ordinary people in the persistence of tyranny: I should like merely to understand how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no power other than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him. Surely a striking situation! 155

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It is therefore, according to La Boetie, the people who create their own servitude by conferring power on the tyrant to control them. Will, as a special mode of desire, activates our imaginative powers. In order to be free, one has to will such freedom (Kaplan, 1972, p 166). For Bachelard, imagination and will are two facets of the same profound force (Kaplan, 1972), and thus ‘dynamic imagination is very specifically the dream of will; it is the will that dreams’ (Bachelard, 1988, p 94). In realizing a future project, the wilful action is key, ‘thinking of the plan not simply as a program of action, but as an idea of a future possibility that a subject is willing to actualise’ (Ahmed, 2014, p 37). Citing the Oxford English Dictionary Online, Ahmed (2014, p 4) provides the typical definition of wilfulness as: ‘asserting or disposed to assert one’s own will against persuasion, instruction, or command; governed by will without regard to reason; determined to take one’s own way; obstinately self-​willed or perverse.’ Subverting the conventional notion, with its negative connotations, Ahmed (2014, p 133) reconceptualizes wilfulness as a foundation for positive political action: Willfulness is not only what subjects are assigned with but shapes the bodies who receive the assignment. Willfulness could be thought of as political art, a practical craft that is acquired through involvement in political struggle, whether that struggle is a struggle to exist or to transform an existence. As La Boetie (2020 [1576]) astutely articulates above, ‘becoming the limbs of the tyrant means becoming the agent of your own harm’ (Ahmed, 2014, p 139). Thus, political wilfulness could involve disobedience or an unwillingness to support the authority or the regime that has inflicted injustice. This wilful unwillingness has a direct connection with the critical consciousness of the subject in realizing the dual relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed (Freire, 1970, 1974; Memmi, 1990 [1965]).

Imagination, intersubjectivity and moral ethics As a manifestation of the wilful act to bring changes to an existing social order, Burns (1961, p 278) proposes two perspectives on political action: (i) ‘as the category of personal conduct concerned with the advancement of self-​interest’; and (ii) ‘as the instrument by which changes in the external or internal conditions of social systems are translated into adaptive changes of these systems’. Although these two perspectives might appear to be incompatible, Burns suggests that they could contribute to achieving the same goal of bringing about structural changes. Consistent with Burns (1961), I argue that these are not separate domains, but are interrelated: the pursuit of self-​interest through challenging the existing 156

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system could also benefit others, and vice versa. Moreover, humans do not only act to improve their own material conditions but also to collaborate in meaning-​making with others (Frankl, 2015). As social beings, individuals’ relations with other people are central to the construction of the subjective meanings they attach to their behaviour: ‘living in the world, we live with others and for others, orienting our lives to them’ (Schutz, 1967 [1932], p 9). Individuals therefore rely on a multitude of logics of action that include, but also transcend, mere logics of self-​interest (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012; Passy and Monsch, 2020). As suggested by Gouldner (1960), a norm of reciprocity among people is a universal feature of society. Indeed, reciprocity as a moral tenet can be found in almost all religious scriptures, from Buddhism to Islam to Judaism (Deckop et al, 2003). Reciprocity as a moral principle transcends self-​centred motivation (Gouldner, 1960; Selznick, 1992). Regarding the principle of reciprocity, Hume’s idea of imagination is significant in association with the notion of sympathy as a vital medium that enables one to feel and understand other people’s pain by putting oneself in someone else’s shoes. Hume (1998 [1751], 2001 [1738]) considers sympathy to be the process of conversion from an idea into an impression through the force of imagination. It confers the imitative power of the faculty to copy the sentiment of the other into an idea in the observer; its productive power to draw connections between the object (the sentiment in the other) and the observer; and the capacity to feel the pleasure that sympathetic connection with others produces (Costelloe, 2017, pp 114–​15). For Hume (1998 [1751], 2001 [1738]), humans experience the greatest pleasure possible through gaining insight into the lives of others. Consistent with Hume, Ricoeur (1976, p 128) argues that through ‘imaginative transfer’ individuals can experience others’ pleasure and pain by putting themselves into other people’s positions. Thus, the imagination is imperative in forging the empathy that creates connections between people. A sense of the guilt one experiences is part of empathy, which allows people to emotionally experience other people’s pain and to reflect upon one’s contribution to it (Fabricius, 2004). This emotional ability of caring for others is important in people’s motivation for activism (Stephen and Finlay, 1999; Kleres and Wettergren, 2017; Craddock, 2019). Kant (1993 [1785], 2017 [1797]) presents his idea of moral duties to ourselves and others. Self-​scrutiny, from the Kantian perspective, can result in awareness that could counteract egotistical self-​esteem. All human beings have a moral responsibility to respect human dignity and to treat another human being as ‘an end for himself as well as for others’ (2017 [1797], p 168). Thus, for Kant (2017 [1797], p 225), ‘humanity itself is a dignity; for a human being cannot be used merely as a means by any human being (either by others or even by himself) but must always be used at the same time as an end’. In the act that follows this principle, virtue manifests ‘the 157

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moral strength of a human being’s will in fulfilling his duty’ (Kant 2017 [1797], p 175). This Kantian commitment to respect the human dignity of every human being should involve taking all measures to realize this obligation, including proactively pursuing ways to help those who are at the margins of society: But while it is not in itself a duty to share the sufferings (as well as the joys) of others, it is a duty to sympathise actively in their fate; and to this end it is therefore an indirect duty to cultivate the compassionate natural (aesthetic) feelings in us, and to make use of them as so many means to sympathy based on moral principles and the feeling appropriate to them. It is therefore a duty not to avoid the places where the poor who lack the most basic necessities are to be found but rather to seek them out, and not to shun sickrooms or debtor’s prisons and so forth in order to avoid sharing painful feelings one may not be able to resist. (Kant 2017 [1979], p 221) According to Kant, this moral commitment is an essential constituent of humanity. Predicated on Kant’s theory, Hill Jr (2010) argues that people often fail to fulfil their moral responsibilities when witnessing the oppressive situations of others, not due to deliberate intention but owing to their negligence. However, this leads to failure in our self-​respect because we are neglecting our moral commitment to protecting the basic rights of others (Hill Jr, 2010). In that sense, for him, identifying who is to blame for such oppression is less significant than taking what he calls ‘forward-​looking moral responsibility’, in which the emphasis is placed on the requirement for every individual to take proactive action to resist or change the oppressive system (Hill Jr, 2010, p 29). As Hill Jr argues in his descriptions of bystanders, a range of interrelated features prevent people from challenging and subverting the status quo, including a culture that fosters conformity and docility, and a general reluctance to disrupt the established social order. Hill Jr continues by arguing that bystanders are complicit in the persistence of oppression by passively assisting in the wrongdoing of the oppressor. Thus, individuals have a moral duty of self-​scrutiny as well as of developing moral virtue to help others (Hill Jr, 2010). Consonant with Hill Jr, Arnold (2017, p 126) suggests that individuals have moral responsibilities to take an ethico-​political stance that ‘appeals to human dignity, constitutional principles, or democratic sentiments’. According to Arnold, the human capacities of speech and reason have been the foundational components that differentiate the human from the animal, which enables the former to exist as a political animal. The cognitive ability of humans to reason and to use speech allows them to distinguish justice from injustice, just from unjust violence. Thus, challenging a system that 158

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has created the animalization of humans is to perform one’s political and ethical duty to humanity (Arnold, 2017). Founded on Levinas (1999), Sliwinski similarly proposes that the Rights of Man originate from a recognition of an individual’s responsibility for the rights of the other. Situating the 1755 Lisbon earthquake as a ‘new’ discursive point of human rights, Sliwinski (2009) calls for the re-​imagination of human rights through our exposure to human vulnerability and our response to it. In this context, being able to judge what constitutes the conditions of being human, beyond simply being free and equal in dignity and rights, is vital in creating connections with others. As depicted by Butler (2004), the commonalities we share as humans through loss and vulnerability can function as a salient point of connection between people. It is ‘tele-p​ athos –​the sympathetic identification with another’s suffering at a distance’ (Sliwinski, 2009, p 31) –​which allows us to experience another’s pain as our own and this can trigger a collective act.

Altruistic Political Imagination The ideas of caring for others and reciprocity lead to the concept of altruism. The term was first coined by Auguste Comte in 1851 (Scott and Seglow, 2007), borrowed from the Italian word altrui, meaning ‘others’, which originates from the Latin alteri (Teske, 1997, p 73). In Comte’s definition, altruism refers to an act that is antithetical to egoism (Twemlow, 2017), and thus its central tenet is to prioritize the interests of others over those of the self (Scott and Seglow, 2007). Bar-​Tal (1986, p 5) delineates five pivotal components of altruism: ‘altruistic behaviour (a) must benefit another person, (b) must be performed voluntarily, (c) must be performed intentionally, (d) the benefit must be the goal by itself, and (e) must be performed without expecting any external reward’. Similarly, three constituents of altruism are proposed by Cohen (1978): a) giving, or the desire to give; b) empathy; and c) the non-​existence of motives for reward from altruistic behaviour. Consonant with this, Saha (2000, p 10) defines altruism as behaviour that seeks to help others and includes ‘intentions, goals, and predispositions to work towards the betterment of society’. In this sense, altruism is a principal component of collective life and ‘the desirable future state of humanity’ (Bykov, 2017, p 798). Altruism as a moral and philosophical concept can also be found in Asian philosophical and religious traditions, such as Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism (Ma, 2009). Dubs (1951, p 48) traces the origins of altruism from Confucius’ (551–​479 BCE) notion of Ren, in which he refers to love (ai), meaning ‘love others’ although it has been translated in different ways since: benevolence, perfect virtue, the Good or humanity. Predicated on these, Dubs (1951, p 48) defines Ren as ‘benevolent love’, which is the 159

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main element of Confucius’ ethical teaching. This idea of ‘benevolent love’ for others is concomitantly embodied in the term reciprocity (shu) defined by Confucius, as exemplified by his maxim: ‘do not do to others what you would not like yourself ’ (Dubs, 1951, p 49). In addition, Lee et al (2008) suggest that the Confucian philosopher, Mencius (371–​289 BCE), regards humans as good and altruistic, and therefore unable to tolerate other people’s suffering (Mencius, 1970), as illustrated by his saying (2A6, cited by Chong, 2002, p 27): ‘No man is devoid of a heart sensitive to the suffering of others.’ As elucidated by Liu (2012), altruism is a major feature of moral cultivation in the neo-​Confucian philosophy of Zhang Zai in China. Zhang Zai regards morality as comprising the transformation of one’s biological desire into altruistic desire for others’ wellbeing. The Japanese concept of Omoiyari (altruistic sensitivity) similarly reflects altruism as a key characteristic, which means ‘an individual’s sensitivity to imagine another’s feelings and personal affairs, including his or her circumstances’ (Shinmura, 1991, p 387, cited by Hara, 2006, p 24). According to Hara (2006, p 26), Omoiyari consists of sympathy and empathy: while the former refers to a concern or feeling for another person, the latter refers to ‘actually feeling as that person does’ and thus ‘understanding others through imagining the situation of others’. With regard to the fundamental principles of altruism, the relationships between the self and others require further discussion. Based on Comte’s definition, altruism is an antinomy of the self or self-​interest because it is denoted as inherently promoting the prioritization of the wellbeing of others. In this sense, there is a clear-​cut separation between the self and others, with the premise that altruistic acts should be devoid of the former. As noted previously, Kant proposes that one has a duty to the happiness of others without expecting any reward: ‘the moral worth of an action does not lie in the effect expected from it nor in any principle of action that needs to borrow its motive from this expected effect’ (1993 [1987], p 13); ‘I ought to sacrifice a part of my welfare to others without hope of return, because this is a duty’ (2017 [1797], p 166). Thus, for Kant (1993 [1987], 2017 [1797]), individual moral duty to others derives a priori and constitutes ‘a categorical imperative’ that is not influenced by any inner and/​or outer motives, and it presupposes ‘moral apathy’ (2017, p 178) –​pure reason that is free from moral feelings. However, scholars have questioned such a conceptualization. For example, Liu (2012) argues that the pursuit of self-​interest does not necessarily prevent individuals from engaging in altruistic behaviour. In addition, Jasper (2011) demonstrates the crucial role played by emotions in an individual’s acts to benefit others. Consistent with this, Teske (1997) –​drawing on his research on political activists –​provides a useful framework that encompasses more complex motivations behind political activism, perceived as the combination 160

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of identity construction and altruistic morality. Rather than situating the two as opposing entities, his identity-​construction approach sees them as being located along a spectrum, and thus self-​interest and altruistic motives can co-​ exist in political movements. His data noticeably suggests that self-​regarding and altruistic concerns were effortlessly fused in his activists’ narratives. Their activism provided them with a platform upon which their moral principles for others and society were acted out, as well as the realization of what they wanted from their lives and the benefits of their involvement. Tilly (2001) similarly points out the influential role played by the political identities of individuals in their activism. According to Tilly, questions around who they are, their rights and obligations, and their intentions, shape the kind of collective interactions and performances in which they engage. This resonates with my data, and I have also discussed the role of self-​worth and identity construction through my participants’ activism in my previous work (Lim, 2021). Ms A’s narrative additionally illustrates the interconnected relationship between the self and others: ‘My belief in life is that those who have realised their dreams become other people’s dream. I want to give the dream that I have realised to other North Koreans. What we [defectors] enjoy on a daily basis, such as eating a meal together at a table as a family, appears to be nothing special, but it is extremely difficult to achieve in North Korea.’ Thus, human rights activism becomes the bridge that connects her with others through the spillover effect of the actualization of her own dreams onto other people’s happiness. Ms A also emphasizes the imperative of her identity in activism, because she believes that ‘one cannot do anything if they don’t know who they are’. She further talks about the benefits of her activism: ‘My trauma has been healed a lot through talking to people directly, being listened to by people, feeling pain together and holding hands. When I started, I was afraid, but in fact, since I started my activism, I’ve become healthier … if I hadn’t conducted my activism, I would have lived like a frog in a well without future and with greed, without knowing what happiness meant. People tend to think happiness is far away, but in fact it’s always around us. It is with happiness that I’m talking to you today because this opportunity has been created, I can talk to you freely and I feel happy in itself. If I hadn’t conducted human rights activism, I wouldn’t have found this kind of happiness.’ Although Ms A did not purposefully pursue her own interests and happiness, her narratives clearly suggest the close link between the self and others through her activism. 161

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Staub and Vollhardt (2008) explain how traumatic experiences can have a transformative effect. They describe ‘Altruism Born of Suffering’ (ABS) as the processes by which violent and traumatic experiences are transformed into the positive action of helping and caring for others. In other words, ABS denotes ‘the processes by which individuals move from survivorship to activism in a quest to help others’ (Hernandez-​Wolfe, 2011, p 230). In that sense, the traumatic experiences become an impetus for people to reflect upon their past and their role in changing the circumstances of those who suffer. Hence, transformation through ABS can benefit not only individuals but also communities (Staub and Vollhardt, 2008). As Lee (2016) suggests, the search for meaning as a principal human activity becomes prominent when faced with traumatic life events. According to Frankl (2014), only meaning can provide us with hope in abhorrent situations. Here, active imagination is vital in turning a wounded or disturbed mental condition into a positive state (  Jung, 1997). Passy (2001) demonstrates how altruism manifests as a collective and political mode in solidarity movements to promote the interests of disadvantaged social groups whose human rights are being violated, such as victims of gender-​based violence, asylum seekers and refugees. From her perspective, political activists are not pursuing their own personal interests or seeking to gain directly from their actions, thus their actions lead to political altruism, which is delineated by Passy (2001, p 6) as: A form of behaviour based on acts performed by a group or/​and on behalf of a group, and not aimed to meet individual interests; it is directed at a political goal of social change or the redefinition of power relations; and individuals involved in this type of social change do not stand to benefit directly from the success deriving from the accomplishment of those goals. While the notion of political altruism reflects North Korean women’s human rights activism to a substantial degree, it does pose some questions that require further examination. Reflecting some highly contested characteristics of the concept, Passy (2001) discusses its paradoxes and theoretical challenges. Her first question concerns whether it would be possible for people in Western countries, such as the USA, where individualism prevails, to carry out genuinely altruistic acts. Wuthnow (1991), drawing on voluntarism in the USA, claims that altruistic behaviours are not inherently contradictory with individualism because they can function as a vehicle for self-​expression and individuality by making people feel better about themselves. The second question posed by Passy (2001) regards the role of internal rewards in defining altruism: can acts still be considered altruistic if people benefit mentally from performing them? Bar-​Tal’s (1986) definition requires 162

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a person to perform acts without expecting any external reward, such as financial gain. I take this position and I treat internal rewards as not in opposition to the conceptualization of altruism, if activists do not seek external rewards. Indeed, drawing on the data from my research, I argue that the self and a positive sense of self are an intrinsic part of altruism since the individuals themselves and their agency are key in driving their behaviour. Their sense of self-​worth and happiness operates as the foundation for them to be able to act for the benefit of others; without these factors, people would not have sufficient inner strength to carry out such acts. In addition, their altruism has significant implications for themselves in alleviating their sense of guilt and fulfilling their sense of responsibility, reciprocal obligation and moral duty, as emerged in the narratives of my participants. Although these inner rewards were not their primary goal for taking part in the activism, it is arguable that the women activists benefited psychologically through their participation. In this sense, political altruism entails individual as well as collective facets, and the self can be regarded as vital in its conceptualization, rather than contradictory or marginal. Together with the above, the participants’ vision of a democratic future for the DPRK, where women’s human rights are respected and protected to a high standard, is imperative to their activism. Thus, I maintain that the future-​ oriented dimension needs to be articulated and elaborated more explicitly than in Passy’s concept. Although the element of imagination and utopian vision are embedded in Passy’s notion, given their significance, I propose that ‘Altruistic Political Imagination’ (API) more appositely encapsulates the human rights activism of North Korean women activists. The central tenet of API is imagining a better future and life for others, specifically women (and children) who have escaped in search of a better existence, as well as for those remaining in the DPRK. Even where the individual would benefit from the processes of their involvement in the activism (for instance, through the fulfilment of their moral duty) and the positive outcomes (for example, healing), this would not be the primary interest or motivation for their actions, but a by-​product of it (Staub and Vollhardt, 2008). I delineate API as: Imagination that takes place in the sphere of politics and political movement for the interests of others in envisioning a better future state for a particular society or community. This act of dreaming of better future lives for others becomes the impetus for individual and/​ or collective action that is directed towards achieving the imagined outcomes for the benefit of others (and the self). As portrayed in my conceptualization of imagination above, the relational, empathetic and future-​oriented dimensions are also embedded in API. My concept has four characteristics that differ from Passy’s. Firstly, in API 163

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emotions are regarded as an inseparable part of the mobility of imagination that induces action; thus, it is different from the Kantian sense of carrying out a moral duty to others free from the impact of affect. Secondly, it treats the self as an essential aspect of altruism; as a social being, the self has an inextricable connection with others. Thirdly, reflecting the second principle, API represents individual as well as group interests, even where the ultimate goal targets the benefit of others and the common good. Fourthly, the future-​oriented dimension is central; key to API is the visionary imagination that impels transformative action to improve other people’s lives to a profound extent.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have presented a theoretical framework that represents the motives behind North Korean women’s activism. What emerged from their narratives was the significance of moral concern for others, as well as the social relations they encounter and forge during their involvement in human rights activism, together with their vision for the future. Imagination was the common thread that connected the motives behind their activism. Our cognitive capacity to create a mental image that is absent from or deconstructs reality, following Bachelard (1969 [1958], 1988), enables people to visualize a possible alternative future for North Korean women, men and children, as well as enabling them to empathize with other people’s pain as though it were their own through ‘imaginative transfer’ (Ricoeur, 1976) or ‘tele-​pathos’ (Sliwinski, 2009). API encompasses these relational and future-​oriented characteristics in aiding North Korean women activists to create a concrete utopian dream in which women are treated with respect without exploitation, and the human rights of North Korean people are highly protected. While this concept is developed specifically from the narratives of DPRK female (and male) defector activists, it has potentially wider applicability as a conceptual framework for the experiences of other political activists and activism. References Ahmed, S. (2014) Willful Subjects, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Andrews, M. (2014) Narrative Imagination and Everyday Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota Press. Appadurai, A. (2000) ‘Grassroots globalization and the research imagination’, Public Culture, 12(1): 1–​19. Arendt, H. (2017 [1951]) The Origins of Totalitarianism, Milton Keynes: Penguin Books. 164

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Conclusion North Korean women’s human rights As examined in this book, North Korea is at an interesting crossroads where ‘old’ and ‘new’ meet. Kim Jong Un has inherited a legacy of totalitarianism, built on a pseudo-​religious and familial imagery with a clear hierarchy, along with a failed economy and widespread human rights violations. There have been some signs and suggestions that the DPRK is experiencing cultural shifts, especially in gender relations, mainly due to the development of a market economy and women’s newly obtained role as breadwinners. This advancement has strengthened the status of women and their bargaining power in the household (Kang, 2008; Haggard and Noland, 2012; Schwekendiek and Mercier, 2016). In addition, there are indications that young women have begun to express their identity and freedom by using fashion and make-​up, which is regarded as a form of resistance that challenges the oppressive system (Saucedo, 2020). Given that almost every sphere of life is controlled, wearing jeans when women are required to wear skirts can be an act of ‘rebellion’. Reflecting this development, Radio Free Asia (RFA) (2020) reports that Kim Jong Un’s war on the growing impact of South Korean pop culture is a result of the ‘illegal’ infiltration into the DPRK of the latter’s dramas, movies and pop music, which are reportedly watched by 70 per cent of the 25 million North Korean population. According to the RFA article, the DPRK government has taken a strict approach to the cultural influence of the South through video lectures that contain a warning of more severe legal punishment for speaking or writing in the South Korean style, in combination with ideological education projects, to prohibit the further percolation of South Korean culture. As illuminated by this recent development, the DPRK has not undergone profound changes, despite the high expectations of transformation and modernization under the reign of Kim Jong Un. While some women have made small gains in power and freedom at home, the deeply entrenched patriarchal culture and structures have not been dismantled (Jung and Dalton, 170

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2006; Hosaniak, 2013). Women continue to play the role of main carer in the household on top of their economic responsibilities, with implications of even greater workloads (Park, 2011; Cho et al, 2020). In addition, changes in gender roles have increased the domestic violence inflicted by husbands who are frustrated by their loss of status as head of the household (Schwekendiek and Mercier, 2016). Moreover, women’s increased movement within the DPRK and across the borders to China as traders have made them the target of ‘chance assault’ by border guards and male officers, who exploit some of these women’s ‘illegality’ and vulnerable situations to demand sexual favours in return for leniency towards minor offences (Park, 2011). The North Korean government has enacted numerous laws on gender since 1946 (Jung and Dalton, 2006), as well as having been a member of the UN since 1991. It has agreed to the observance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Charter and acceded to international human rights treaties, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (Quintana, 2022). However, in reality, these laws are not adhered to, and often certain terms and statements are not clearly defined, leaving them open to interpretation (Yang, 2018). This vagueness gives the government scope for evading such legal frameworks, as exemplified by the lack of legal recourse against the gender-​based violence that is prevalent in the DPRK, despite stipulations banning such abuse (Gooptar, 2017). Human rights violations against North Korean women extend to those who escape to China. Despite an agreement with the UN and global demands to abide by the UN Convention on refugees, China forcefully sends captured North Korean women back to the DPRK. Hostile border governance and the policy of repatriation have led to elevated broker fees for human smuggling and have created an even worse sense of insecurity among North Korean women in China, forcing them to maintain highly dangerous and precarious lives underground. While the Chinese government implicitly exploits the cheap labour provided by these ‘illegal’ migrants (Lankov, 2004), its uncompromising policy on North Korean refugees in China puts them at risk. I argue that, from a Chinese societal perspective, these women fulfil a useful function by filling the gap in the marriage market, especially in rural China, which has resulted from the gender imbalance caused by a historic preference for boys over girls in conjunction with the one-​child policy and urbanization. It is arguable that, from the Chinese government’s perspective, North Korean brides provide solutions to its own societal problems of men struggling to find women to marry, despite the complex international diplomatic issues and the potential regional instability caused by their entry into China. As part of maintaining social control and order, the Chinese government has historically used the institution of marriage as a vital tool, deploying 171

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the mass media as a state mouthpiece. The discursive construct of ‘leftover women’ (Sheng nu) –​which forces highly educated, career-​driven young single women not to delay marriage by demonizing them and depicting them as products past their ‘use-​by’ dates (Hong Fincher, 2014) –​is a prime example of this. In addition to providing social stability, marriage is an important means of reproduction that generates a future workforce for the economy and elder care; this is of serious concern to the Chinese government, due to the rapid increase in the ageing population, as demonstrated by its repeal of the one-​child policy in 2016 to tackle this issue (Feng et al, 2016; Whyte, 2019). This suggests that North Korean women make a vital contribution to Chinese society. Nonetheless, they are largely treated as disposable objects, let alone receiving protection for their basic rights. In particular, the ‘everyday bordering’ (Yuval-​Davis et al, 2019) that permeates Chinese society mobilizes not only the police but also ordinary citizens to turn their watchful eyes towards looking for hidden North Koreans. This puts women in particular at higher risk as they form the majority of ‘illegal’ migrants in China, as well as subjecting them to exploitation by human traffickers and/​or smugglers, along with Chinese buyers (The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2009). The harsh treatment of North Korean women by the Chinese government has further implications for children born to these women and Chinese men because their legal rights and status are not recognized by the state (Muico, 2005). This also affects what happens when women are captured and repatriated to the DPRK, as many children are left behind in China without their mothers (Chang et al, 2008). This means that the wellbeing of these children is largely left to the whim of their Chinese families, whose good care and protection are not guaranteed, as illustrated by one of my participants. Women’s harrowing experiences continue during the process of repatriation and afterwards. Despite the illegality of strip searches of female detainees, such activities are routinely carried out by border guards against women who are repatriated to the DPRK. International bodies, such as the UN, consider this as equivalent to ‘torture’ (Yang, 2018). Moreover, women’s treatment in detention centres –​involving the common practices of poor diet, hard labour, control of bodily movement, beatings and forced abortion and infanticide –​remains a pressing issue (Charny, 2005; Muico, 2005). The DPRK’s extreme ethnic nationalism regards children resulting from the union of North Korean women with Chinese men as a betrayal of loyalty to national purity, and this is used as justification for the killing of such infants and foetuses (Charny, 2004, 2005; Chang et al, 2008; Home Office, 2016). In this regard, North Korean detention centres are a locus where the combination of biopolitics and necropolitics manifests itself through the sub-​ humane treatment of detainees, as though they were animals. To explain it 172

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more clearly, detention centres operate as a site where power over life and death plays a crucial role in determining the fates of North Korean women and their babies, based on the ideology of ethnic chauvinism.

Defector human rights activism As Cassinelli (1960) explains, totalitarianism is founded on the comprehensive and detailed control of all ideas and beliefs. A daily dose of perpetual indoctrination therefore becomes an indispensable aspect of inducing the active unanimity of the population (Brzezinski, 1956). Totalitarian leaders seek to create insecurity among their people as a tactic to retain complete control over them (Cassinelli, 1960). Consonant with this, so far the North Korean state has successfully managed to contain collective mobilization and thus, despite its blatant human rights violations, people inside the country do not dare to come together to overthrow the dictatorial regime. Even though there are marginal signs of people complaining during hardships caused by failed currency policy and over-​restrictions on market activities (Lee, 2012), no organized subversive groups or social and political movements are found in the DPRK (Chubb and Yeo, 2019; Hosaniak, 2019). Given the lack of dissent within the DPRK, the salience of human rights activism by defectors is even more perceptible. As discussed previously, some defectors who have settled in South Korea and the USA have played a crucial role in pushing the human rights agenda through the UN by providing testimonies of lived experiences and their other activism, which involves sending balloons carrying leaflets and USB sticks and/​or broadcasting across the border. In particular, balloons sent by defector activists in the ROK, containing propaganda criticizing the DPRK regime, have threatened the North as well as its Southern counterpart, resulting in the explosion at the South–​North liaison office and the legal banning of such activities by the Southern government (BBC News, 2020; Berlinger et al, 2020; Cho, 2020; Choe, 2020; The Guardian, 2020). In tandem with the North Korean government’s recent response to the UN’s pressures, this shows the potential power of defector activism. However, at the same time, human rights activism that directly targets and addresses North Korean women’s issues is limited. Considering the urgent need to address the women’s human rights violations that have been investigated in this book and elsewhere, female human rights activism is critical. Its significance in fact extends beyond the women’s rights agenda –​ it also encompasses the rights of children and men, especially those who are outside the DPRK. As emerged in my interview with Ms A, there is potential for the creation of a temporary passport for North Korean refugees that can provide safe passage and processes for them to travel and settle in a democratic country where their rights can be protected. 173

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Unfortunately, though not unexpectedly, North Korean women’s activism in the UK has faced numerous barriers due to a lack of financial resources, and women’s fear of revealing their identity and exposing themselves to possible shame, together with the language barrier. Unlike defector human rights activism based in the USA and South Korea, which rely heavily on government funding for the continuation of their activism (Chubb and Yeo, 2019), one of the main features of women’s activism in the UK is its deliberate dissociation from international funding bodies to enable these women to exercise their agency without the demands and constraints imposed by such institutions. Although it is challenging, the main activist believes that this leads to ‘authentic’ activism that is not tainted or corrupted by money or financial dependence. These barriers are offset to some extent by continuous networking with local, national and international NGOs, schools and universities, while continuing to work with politicians and other supporters. I have proposed that imagination plays a central role in enabling women activists to continue their fight in this challenging milieu in two principal respects: its capacity to enable the individual to visualize a concrete utopia that appears to be impossible to realize at present; and its ability to enable empathy, with activists putting themselves in someone else’s shoes. These creative, future-​oriented and relational dimensions are key in motivating women defectors to participate in and continue their activism, notwithstanding their knowledge and understanding of the difficulties facing them and other North Koreans. More specifically, what I call Altruistic Political Imagination (API) encapsulates multiple dimensions that spur people into collective and political action, based on their desire to help other people and to dream of a better future for all North Korean women, as well as men and children. Through this concept I highlight that the notion of altruism does not conflict with the idea of self or self-​interest; rather, the latter is an important foundational force in acting on behalf of other people. This idea relates to some extent to Ms A’s definition of activism in Chapter 1, in which she describes how living well outside North Korea can itself be seen as activism, without the need for any direct articulation of anti-​governmental ideas in public. Thus, activism to achieve the dream of protecting North Korean women’s rights starts from the inner strength of individual women defectors who successfully settle and live in the UK, thus demonstrating their resistance to the regime by proactively leaving the country despite the strict ban and stringent border controls. These inner strengths and resilience become vital assets for their activism in helping others, as well as in overcoming their own pain and struggle. In addition, as noted by Ms A, women play a central role in educating and sustaining a nation. Thus, the protection of women’s rights is a critical litmus test for any country in terms of its standard of social, economic and political development, as well as its respect for human rights. 174

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Impact of human rights activism As noted in Chapter 1, human rights activism by defectors has contributed to legislative developments, both domestically and internationally, such as the North Korean government’s engagement with the reviews by the Committee on CEDAW and the Committee on CRC in 2017 (Quintana, 2022). For example, on 11 April 2016, the DPRK submitted a report to the United Nations on how the state had responded to improve the rights of women and children (CEDAW, 2016). The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) (2017) also documents that, during CEDAW’s review of the government’s second to fourth periodic reports, Han Tae Song –​Permanent Representative of the DPRK to the United Nations Office in Geneva –​highlighted a number of legislative and administrative measures taken, including the establishment of a law on the protection and promotion of the rights of women and a law on the protection of the rights of the child. The North Korean Representative additionally claimed that his government had established courses of action and measures to protect women from the slightest tendency of discrimination and to exempt them from arduous and harmful work, while also denouncing defector testimonies as false (OHCHR, 2017). As for international responses, the USA passed a law in 2004 to promote human rights and freedom in North Korea, including the development of the market economy and an increase in the availability of information (CRS, 2007). In 2006, Japan additionally passed the North Korean Human Rights Act, to enhance public awareness of the human rights situation in North Korea and to resolve the issue of abductions of Japanese nationals by North Korea (HRW, 2016). The UN General Assembly has adopted an annual resolution on Pyongyang’s systematic and pervasive human rights violations every year since 2005 (CRS, 2007). Moreover, as part of the international community’s commitment to hold North Korea accountable for rights abuses, on 21 March 2013 the UNHRC instituted a Commission of Inquiry (COI) to investigate human rights violations in the DPRK (UNHRC, 2023). The 2014 COI report on North Korean human rights marks a significant international effort to address these issues (Chubb, 2014). In addition to these developments, in June 2015 the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights established a special office in Seoul to gather evidence and information about ongoing abuses and crimes against humanity in North Korea (HRW, 2016). However, notwithstanding this significant progress, North Korean human rights, especially women’s rights, remain a serious issue. Contrary to the claims made by the DPRK’s UN Representative that procedures for women’s rights have been implemented, evidence suggests that some of the legal changes have been reversed in recent years or have not translated into reality (Hosaniak, 2019; Cho et al, 2020). 175

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The issues I have examined in this book, especially in Chapter 3, also unequivocally speak volumes about the persistence and pervasiveness of human rights violations against women and the lack of protection that perpetuates oppression against women. As stressed by Keck and Sikkink (1998, p 183), ‘reporting facts’ is salient in the pursuit of achieving human rights protection. Founded on this, these authors propose that human rights activists should: ‘a) carefully document abuses; b) clearly demonstrate state accountability for those abuses under international law; c) develop a mechanism for effectively exposing documented abuse nationally and internationally’. Most of these suggestions have been implemented by the UN in the case of DPRK human rights violations, with pressure and input from defector human rights activists. In this context, the five stages of effectiveness proposed by Keck and Sikkink (1998, p 192) can be useful in evaluating the success of North Korean women defectors’ human rights activism: ‘1) issue attention, agenda setting, and information generation; 2) discursive change, or establishing prescriptive status of norms; 3) procedural changes, such as treaty ratification or cooperation within international organisations; 4) changes in policies; and 5) influence on behaviour of state and nonstate actors’. The first stage of setting the agenda and generating information has been achieved through women’s human rights activism, as well as other types of defector activism, as noted previously. Regarding women’s human rights activism, there is a clear issue that activists are working on as well as working towards, building on well-​documented testimonies from North Korean women. This has led to the partial realization of stages 3 and 4; for instance, via the DPRK’s party to CEDAW and the Rights of Children, and the establishment of the Law on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Women in 2010 respectively. DPRK human rights activism has affected the behaviour of both state and non-​state actors in relation to North Korean women’s human rights issues to some marginal extent; for example, international bodies, such as the UN, NGOs and humanitarian organizations (such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch), have worked towards improving North Korean women’s rights. However, at a more profound level, a real substantive shift has not yet taken place. China continues to repatriate North Koreans to the DPRK, notwithstanding its clear knowledge of the persecution of those who are repatriated. In parallel with this, gendered norms and expectations continue to shape both men’s and women’s lives in North Korea, with the latter shouldering a disproportionate amount of the burden of earning income while concurrently looking after their families, as highlighted in this book. In this regard, stage 2 of changes in the status quo has not happened, and this will be the most challenging task, as history regarding gender equality clearly shows. 176

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Limitations There are some limitations to my research, in particular the small sample size for activism that I explore in Chapter 4. It would have strengthened the overall quality of the data if I had been able to collect the accounts of more women activists. This would have allowed me to discuss their visions and strategies for their future activism in a more extensive manner. Nonetheless, the aim of my chosen methodology lies in illuminating hidden stories in depth. In this sense, representativeness or generalizability are not the main concerns of my work; the fact that there are only a few female activists working on North Korean women’s human rights suggests important factors and contexts that I need to unearth and elucidate. If one recognizes the criticality and urgency of North Korean women’s rights issues, then any political movement, however small, is salient, especially as there are very few activists outside the UK who focus on such issues. Nevertheless, a more extensive study of all the North Korean defector human rights activism would have enabled me to situate the UK’s women’s movement in a broader context, to gain a better understanding of how it fits into other North Korean activism. Based on this realization, future research should examine different human rights activism spread across various countries to compare differences and similarities in order to identify potential synergies between them, while also identifying areas that need support from national and international organizations.

Recommendations While the importance of women’s role is recognized by the Kim Jong Un government, this is done in a rather exploitative manner without offering any genuine acknowledgement of women’s contribution to the economy and the survival of the nation. History tells us that women are vital not only as mothers, carers and educators but also as economic actors, as proven by the case of the DPRK, and its potential leaders. Human rights protection should be at the forefront of any national or international agenda, beyond the interests of individual nation-​states. The UN should seriously consider the stateless status of North Korean refugees and provide legitimate protection for their safety. As articulated by Ms A, in a strict sense, those who are outside the Korean peninsula belong neither to the North nor to the South. This is because the former treats all unapproved escapees as ‘illegal’ criminals; at the same time, the latter delineates both Koreas as constitutionally belonging to the South and therefore offers legal protection for North Korean refugees arriving in the ROK, yet it does not clearly specify support for or access to those who are stuck in third countries, such as China or Thailand. Hence, there is a clear justification 177

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for the UN to provide temporary passports to North Korean refugees outside the peninsula, especially to those in China. Alongside this, the UK government needs to change its approach towards North Korean asylum seekers and refugees. Due to the South Korean constitution stipulating its duty to provide protection and shelter for North Korean defectors (Choi, 2018), the UK Home Office has been antagonistic towards them, in harmony with its ‘hostile environment’ policy (Griffiths and Yeo, 2021). Reflecting the UK’s general attitude towards refugees and asylum seekers, North Korean asylum applicants are largely seen as ‘bogus’ claimants who already hold South Korean citizenship, or who are ethnic Chinese pretending to be North Koreans (Song and Bell, 2018). As has been well documented in numerous studies that examine defectors’ experiences in the ROK (Jeon et al, 2013; Sung and Go, 2014; IPUS, 2017; Ryu and Park, 2018), North Korean re-​settlers in the South have been subjected to discrimination and prejudice. This forces many of them to seek secondary migration to anglophone countries, such as the UK, where discrimination and racism by other ethnic groups feel less hurtful than by other Koreans and where it is possible to gain better opportunities for their children’s education (Takenaka, 2007; Song and Bell, 2018). Even though policy offers the prospect for North Koreans to seek security from the South Korean government, North Koreans face a harsh reality in South Korea, adding to the hardship they had to undergo in moving from the DPRK to China and via other third countries until they reached South Korea. Thus, there is a danger of further human rights violations through oppression, discrimination and exploitation even if they have gained freedom to enjoy their fundamental rights. For this reason, the UK government should grant refugee status to North Korean asylum seekers, rather than leaving them to suffer and struggle in the ‘grey zones’ for years without any clear guarantee for the future (Yuval-​Davis et al, 2019), as illustrated in my previous publication (Lim, 2021). As described by my participants, defectors and defector activists provide a vital source of information, drawing on their own lives in the DPRK and in China. This experiential knowledge, in combination with their lives outside the DPRK, additionally enables them to gain both an emic and an etic understanding of how to address human rights issues in North Korea and China. While international organizations, such as the UN and Amnesty International, are crucial for making progress in the North Korean women’s human rights agenda, women activists and their activism are pivotal not only in the continuous effort to document and report women’s experiences but also in transforming the impossible into the possible by working collaboratively with such global political and humanitarian institutions. Hence, we should carefully watch the progress made by North Korean women’s human rights activism. 178

Conclusion

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182

Index References to endnotes show both the page number and the note number (140n3).

A abortion  20, 73, 76, 91 ABS (Altruism Born of Suffering)  162 Act of Equal Rights for Men and Women (1946)  69 activism/​activists  lead activist influence  114–​16 meanings  20–​1, 22, 174 non-​violent resistance  22, 135–​6 psychological benefits  163 self-​interest and altruism  160–​1, 162–​3 see also DPRK women’s human rights activism; human rights activism/​activists agency  see voluntarism/​agency Ahmed, S.  156 Almond, G.  121 altruism  159–​63 Altruism Born of Suffering (ABS)  162 Altruistic Political Imagination (API)  26, 159–​64, 174 Andrews, M.  153 animalization  89 anti-​trafficking interventions  84 Appadurai, A.  152, 154 Arduous March  7, 136 see also March of Suffering Arendt, H.  95, 123, 154 Arnold, J.  89, 158–​9 asylum seekers  see forced migrants/​refugees authenticity  56–​9, 134, 138 B Bachelard, G.  153, 156 Balibar, É.  12 Bar-​Tal, D.  159 Becker, H.S.  43 Bell, M.  129 Berlin, I.  119 Berry, M.  10 Betts, A.  17 Bhugra, D.  73, 74, 90

biographical approach  see life histories biopolitics  14 Bloch, E.  155 Bob, C.  107–​8 border controls  8, 11, 59 aggravating impact of  84–​5, 86 border officials  88 bordering  everyday  11–​12, 81, 172 gendered and racialized  13–​15, 91–​2 Borshuk, C.  115 Buckle, J.L.  54 Budziszewska, M.  113 Burns, T.  156 Butler, J.  17 Byungjin policy  6 C capitalist ideology  91 Cassinelli, C.W.  173 CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women)  175 children  of refugees in China  15, 28n8, 92, 113, 172 see also infanticide China  children left in  15, 28n8, 92, 113, 172 defectors monitored in  80, 81–​2, 172 DPRK repatriation policy  15, 68, 86, 171 human rights abuses of women defectors in  77–​86 importance of marriage in  171–​2 precarity of refugees in  12, 171 treatment/​status of refugees  15–​16, 86, 94, 171, 172 women’s defection to  8–​9, 13–​14, 171–​2 Choi, E-​Y.  83 choice  86 see also voluntarism/​agency Chubb, D.  22–​3

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Cohen, R.  130, 159 collective action, and imagination  153, 154 collective conscience  116–​18 collectivism  18–​19, 28n9, 107 ‘comfort women’  77, 78 communication, and activism  125–​7 Comte, A.  159, 160 Confucianism  86, 96n4 Confucius  159–​60 conscientization  110 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)  175 Couch, J.  21 COVID-​19 restrictions  7–​8, 20, 116, 136 criminalization of escape  16, 80 critical awareness, and activism  106–​10 critical reflection by researcher  42–​3, 49, 53, 55 criticism of self, in DPRK  93, 97n6 cultural difference, and human rights  18–​19, 107–​9 cultural influence, from outside DPRK  23, 136, 170 D Dalton, B.  70, 71 data analysis  48–​9, 53 data authenticity  56–​9 De Hass, H.  84 death  see execution; infanticide; necropolitics Deckop, J.R.  115 defection  and criminalization  16, 80 feminization of  8–​9 human rights abuses during  77–​86 defectors  see DPRK defectors; forced migrants/​refugees Democratic People’s Republic of Korea see DPRK Denney, S.  6, 52, 57 deportation  from China  15, 68, 86, 171 see also repatriation detention/​imprisonment  in China  87–​8 on repatriation  20, 82–​3, 90–​4, 172 strip searches  88, 89–​90 treatment by guards  88, 89–​91, 93, 94 domestic labour  70–​1 domestic violence  69, 71–​2, 171 donju  6, 27n3 DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea)  concept of human rights in  18–​19, 107–​8, 109 concerns about human rights in  8 conflicting reports of human rights in  19–​20 criminalization of escape  16, 80

defectors’ families in  122 human rights abuses in  68–​77, 107–​8, 171, 176 on repatriation  86–​95, 172–​3 impact of activism on  23–​4, 175 lack of dissent in  173 law and human rights in  23, 171, 175 passports in  129, 140n4 regime ideology and policies  4, 6–​8, 109 regime responses to activism  23–​4, 136–​7, 173 relations with ROK  23–​4, 94–​5 repatriation agreement with China  15, 68, 86, 171 social and economic context  1, 4–​9, 69–​73, 136–​7, 170–​1 women’s human rights in  170–​3, 175 DPRK defectors  activism of  23–​4, 173 justice for  15–​17 passports  128–​9, 131–​2, 140n4 refugee status  129–​31, 177–​8 ROK citizenship  57, 59, 130, 131, 178 status and treatment in China see China women defectors  abuse before defection  68–​77, 171, 176 abuse outside DPRK  77–​86, 171–​2 abuse on repatriation  86–​95, 172–​3 activism of  see DPRK women’s human rights activism cycle of oppression  67–​8, 170–​3 defection to China  8–​9, 13–​14, 77–​86, 171–​2 families left behind  122 importance of  134–​8 DPRK human rights activism  22–​3 DPRK women’s human rights activism  challenges of  174 fear  122–​4 finance  124–​5 language  125–​6 pain and desire to forget  118 political disengagement  118–​21 defector activist motivations  174 collective conscience and guilt  116–​18 connections with lead activist  114–​16 critical awareness  106–​10 responsibility to others  112–​13 story sharing as resistance  110–​12 nature of  2, 22, 105–​6, 174 research on  2–​3 significance of  134–​8, 173, 176, 178 tactics and strategies  education  127–​32 learning English  126–​7 networking  132–​4 Dubs, H.H.  159–​60 Duncan, L.E.  112 Dywer, S.C.  54

184

INDEX

E Eade, D.  138 economic change  6, 71–​2 see also informal economy economic crisis  4, 7, 71–​2, 78 economic migrants  15, 16, 86 education, and activism  106, 121, 127–​32 embedded agency  85 emotions  and imagination  152 see also psychological trauma empathy  157, 160 English language  125–​7 ethics  49–​50 European Alliance  124–​5 execution  87 F Fahy, S.  4, 78 families of defectors  children left in China  15, 28n8, 92, 113, 172 left in DPRK  122 family, society as  28n9 famine  4, 78 Farmer, P.E.  88–​9 Faver, C.A.  113 fear  56, 122–​4 feminist activism  125 feminist approach  44–​7 financial barriers, to activism  124–​5 food, for detainees  92, 93 food insecurity  4, 7–​8, 19, 20, 78, 116 food rationing  70, 71 forced abortions  91 forced labour  80, 92–​3 forced marriage  78–​81, 85–​6 forced migrants/​refugees  abuse of  see human rights abuses and bordering  11–​15 hostility toward  9–​11, 178 increase in  9 international policies  11, 15, 129–​30 justice for  15–​17 North Korean  see DPRK defectors; research participants passports and status of  128–​9, 131–​2, 140n3, 140n4 UK policy  59, 129–​30, 178 UNHCR definition  15–​16 use of term  26–​7n1 forced migration  84 see also defection Foucault, M.  14, 93–​4 Free NK  47, 53 Freedman, J.  13 freedom, concepts of  119 Freeman, M.  18 Freire, P.  110, 120 Frick, E.  140n3

G gender-​based violence  and bordering  13, 171 during defection  77, 80–​1 see also domestic violence; sexual violence gender relations  in DPRK  4–​5, 68–​77, 119, 170–​1 and research relationship  52–​3, 56 gendered bordering  13–​15, 91–​2 gendered division of labour  70–​1 Geniusas, S.  153, 154 Giorgi, A.  41 Glaeser, E.L.  121 Glod, Z.  113 Gouldner, A.W.  157 Green, C.  6 Greenhill, K.M.  16–​17 guards, treatment of detainees  88, 89–​91, 93, 94 guilt  116–​18, 157 H Hara, K.  160 Harding, S.  45 Havel, V.  119–​20 health  70, 71, 74–​5 see also psychological benefits; psychological trauma healthcare  20, 71, 75–​7 Healy, L.M.  108 Hegde, R.S.  13 Heidegger, M.  41 hermeneutic phenomenology  40–​2 Hill Jr., T.E.  158 Hoffman, M.L.  117 Holzberg, B.  13 hope  155 human rights  concerns about DPRK  8 conflicting reports of DPRK  19–​20 and cultural difference  18–​19, 107–​9 DPRK concept of  18–​19, 107–​8, 109 and DPRK law  23, 171, 175 of DPRK women  170–​3, 175 impact of activism on  23–​4, 175–​6 importance of women’s  134–​5 inadequate protection of  94–​5 UN/​Western concept of  18, 107 human rights abuses  detention/​imprisonment  20, 82–​3, 87–​8, 89–​94, 172 domestic violence  69, 71–​2, 171 in DPRK  68–​77, 107–​8, 171, 176 forced abortions  91 forced labour  80, 92–​3 forced marriage  78–​81, 85–​6 human trafficking/​smuggling  60–​1n1, 69, 78–​85, 111, 171

185

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infanticide  69, 91, 172 outside DPRK  77–​86, 171–​2 on repatriation  86–​95, 172–​3 sexual harassment  72–​4, 171 sexual violence  13, 69, 72–​4, 77, 80–​1, 90, 171 strip searches  88, 89–​90 human rights activism/​activists  and DPRK  22–​4, 173, 175 impact of  23–​4, 175–​6 meanings of  21, 22 organizations and funding  23, 124–​5, 174 see also DPRK women’s human rights activism Human Rights Watch (HRW)  92 human trafficking/​smuggling  60–​1n1, 69, 78–​85, 111, 171 anti-​trafficking interventions  84 Hume, D.  151, 157 humiliation/​shame  89, 90, 111, 118 Huntington, S.P.  10 Husserl, E.  41 hygiene issues  74–​5 I identity construction  161 ideology  6–​7 imagination  Altruistic Political Imagination  163–​4 concepts of  151–​5 intersubjectivity, moral ethics and  156–​9 overview  174 will, wilfulness and  155–​6 imprisonment  see detention/​imprisonment infanticide  69, 91, 172 informal markets (Jangmadang)  69, 96n3, 136 informal (shadow) economy  4, 6, 136 information, penetration into DPRK  23, 136–​7, 170 insider–​outsider position  54–​6 interpretive phenomenology  40–​2 intersubjectivity  42–​3, 156–​9 interviewees  see research participants interviews  46–​7 data authenticity  56–​9 see also researcher–​participant relationship Islamophobia  11 J Jackson, M.  57 Jacobsson, K.  117 Jang, C-​W.  7 Jangmadang  69, 96n3, 136 Japan  11, 175 Jasper, J.M.  155 Joung, E.  7 Juche ideology  4, 6, 27n2, 69 Jung, C.G.  151–​2

Jung, K.  70, 71 justice  15–​17, 95 K Kalra, G.  73, 74, 90 Kant, I.  157–​8, 160 Kaplan, R.D.  10 Katchadourian, H.  117 Keck, M.E.  21, 176 Kim, E.  79 Kim Jong Un  23–​4, 136 regime of  see DPRK Kim-​Jong-​Unism  7 Kim, K-​S.  7 Kimilsungism-​Kimjongilism  6, 7 Kkotjebi  51 Kleres, J.  117–​18, 155 knowledge, and activism  127–​32 Kook, K-​H.  83 Korteweg, A.C.  85 Kotef, H.  9, 84, 105 Kvale, S.  58 L La Boetie, E. de  155–​6 labour  see domestic labour; forced labour labour market, women’s participation  70–​1 language  51, 125–​7 Lankov, A.  130 Law on the Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture (2020)  8 leadership, and activism  115–​16 learning, role in activism  127–​32 Lee, K.  76 Lee, Y-​T.  160 Leurs, K.  46 liberty, concepts of  119 life histories  43–​4, 46–​7, 56–​9 see also storytelling Lindblom, J.  117 M Macleod, M.  138 Mai, N.  13 March of Suffering  78 see also Arduous March Marfleet, P.  10 marketization  4 marriage  forced  78–​81, 85–​6 importance in China  171–​2 voluntary  82–​3, 84, 86 Mbembe, A.  14 media  depictions of refugees  9–​10 from outside DPRK  23, 136, 170 Memmi, A.  120 memories, desire to forget  118–​21 Mencius  160

186

INDEX

Merry, S.E.  108 military, women in  73, 75 military-​first policy  6, 8 Mishler, E.G.  42, 44 mobility justice  95 money  strip searches for  89, 90–​1 see also economic crisis; financial barriers; informal markets Moon Jae-​In  23–​4 moral ethics  156–​9 see also altruism moral responsibility  112–​13, 117, 157–​9 More, Thomas  155 motherhood  72 children left in China  15, 28n8, 92, 113, 172 and healthcare  75–​7 see also infanticide; pregnancy

political altruism  162 political economy  6 political participation, and education  106, 121 politics, disengagement from  118–​21 power dynamics  52–​3, 120 pregnancy  following sexual violence  73 and healthcare  75–​6 and repatriation  14, 91–​2 PRIO (Peace Research Institute Oslo)  113 prisons  see detention/​imprisonment propaganda  23–​4, 123, 136, 173 psychological benefits, of activism  163 psychological trauma  81–​2, 123, 162

N Namjonyeobi  68, 96n2 Nansen Passport  129, 131, 140n3 narrative accounts  see storytelling nationalist ideology  14, 91–​2 necropolitics  14, 92 networks, and activism  132–​4 non-​governmental organizations (NGOs)  23, 125 non-​violent resistance  22, 135–​6 North Korea  see DPRK Nowicka, M.  55

R racialized bordering  13–​15, 91–​2 Raunig, G.  24 reciprocity  157, 160 refugees  see forced migrants/​refugees regime  concept of  96n1 North Korean see DPRK regimes of mobility  84, 96n1 religious repression  115, 139–​40n2 Ren  159–​60 repatriation  China–​DPRK agreement  15, 68, 86, 171 detention following  20, 82–​3, 90–​4, 172 human rights abuses  86–​95, 172–​3 and necropolitics  14, 92 variable treatment  86–​7 reproductive healthcare  75–​7 Republic of Korea  see ROK research ethics  49–​50 research methodology  authenticity and truth  56–​9 biographical approach  43–​4, 46–​7 data analysis  48–​9, 53 feminism  44–​7 limitations  177 participants  47–​8 phenomenology  40–​3 research participants  access and recruitment  47–​8, 177 authenticity of testimonies  56–​9 relationship with researcher  42, 45, 51–​6 security concerns of  56, 122–​4 research recommendations  177–​8 researcher  critical reflection by  42–​3, 49, 53, 55 secondary trauma of  49–​50 subject position of  46, 50–​6

O occupational segregation  71 Olivieri, D.  46 Ollis, T.  128 Omoiyari  160 oppression, relations of  120 Orgad, S.  152–​3 organizations  23, 124–​5, 174 outsider–​insider position  54–​6 P pain, as barrier to activism  118–​21 Park, K-​A.  71 passports  128–​9, 131, 140n3, 140n4 Passy, F.  162 patriarchal relations  68–​9, 70–​2, 96n2, 119, 170–​1 Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)  113 Personal Narratives Group (PNG)  58 phenomenology  40–​2 intersubjectivity in  42–​3 and life history  43–​4 police/​guards, treatment of detainees  88, 89–​91, 93, 94 policing/​monitoring  of defectors in China  80, 81–​2, 172 see also spies

Q Quintana, T.O.  19–​20

187

NORTH KOREAN WOMEN AND DEFECTION

researcher–​participant relationship  42, 45, 51–​6 resistance  non-​violent  22, 135–​6 story sharing as  110–​12 see also activism/​activists responsibility  112–​13, 117, 157–​9 Ricoeur, P.  153–​4, 155, 157 ROK (Republic of Korea)  attitudes to refugees  130, 178 citizenship status  57, 59, 130, 131, 178 cultural influence  170 recognition of refugees  11 relations with DPRK  23–​4, 94–​5 responses to activism  23–​4, 173 Royal Court Economy  6, 27n4 Ryan, L.  55 S saenghwal chonghwa (self-​criticism)  93, 97n6 Saha, L.  159 Salazar, N.B.  84, 96n1 Sartre, J-​P.  151, 153 Schiller, N.G.  84, 96n1 Schutz, A.  42 searches  88, 89–​90 security concerns of participants  56, 122–​4 self-​criticism  93, 97n6 self-​harm, to avoid repatriation  87–​8 self-​interest, and altruism  160–​1, 162–​3 self-​reflection, by researcher  42–​3, 49, 53, 55 Seol, D-​H.  11 sex industry  79, 81 see also ‘comfort women’ sexual harassment  72–​4, 171 sexual violence  and border regimes  13, 171 in DPRK  69, 72–​4 during defection  77, 80–​1 on repatriation  90 see also comfort women shadow economy  see informal economy shame/​humiliation  89, 90, 111, 118 Sharma, N.  84 Sheller, M.  11, 95 Shipman, B.  86 Sikkink, K.  21, 176 Skegg, A-​M.  108 Skinner, T.  50 Skrentny, J.D.  11 Sliwinski, S.  159 Smart, C.  86 Smith, H.  19 snowball sampling  47–​8

Snowden, C.  125 social change  4–​5, 70–​1 social class  27–​8n6 social imaginary  123 social relationships, and activism  115 sociopolitical profiling  27–​8n6 Song, J.  18, 52, 57, 129 songbun  14, 27–​8n6 Songun (military-​first) policy  6, 8 South Korea  see ROK Soviet Union  4 spies  122, 124 see also policing/​monitoring Ssali, S.  43 standpoint theory  45 state violence  88–​9 Staub, E.  162 storytelling  42, 43, 44 as resistance  110–​12 truth of testimonies  56–​9, 134, 138 strip searches  88, 89–​90 structural violence  88–​9 subjectivities  political  118–​20 researcher  46, 50–​6 see also intersubjectivity; victims survival migration  17, 95 sympathy  157, 160 T Taylor, C.  123 Ten Principles for the Establishment of the One-​Ideology System  6–​7 Teske, N.  160–​1 thematic analysis  48–​9 Tilly, C.  161 time/​temporality  153 totalitarianism  8, 109, 122–​3, 173 transcendental phenomenology  41 truth, of testimonies  56–​9, 134, 138 U UNICEF  75 United Kingdom (UK)  59, 129–​30, 178 United Nations (UN)  131, 175 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)  10, 15–​16, 175 United States (US)  130, 175 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)  18 urban areas, women in  5 utopia  155 V validity of research  58 van Dijk, J.  133 Verba, S.  121 victim blaming  74 victimhood  53–​4, 82, 83–​4

188

INDEX

victims  transition to activists  collective conscience and guilt  116–​18 connections to activists  114–​16 critical awareness  106–​10 responsibility to others  112–​13 story sharing  110–​12 use of term  139n1 violence  see domestic violence; gender-​based violence; sexual violence; state violence Vollhardt, J.  162 voluntarism/​agency  53–​4, 82–​6 voluntary marriage  82–​3, 84, 86 voluntary migration  84 W Walby, S.  74 Warnock, M.  153 Watson, L.  43–​4 Wettergren, A.  118, 155 will and wilfulness  155–​6

Williams, E.M.  12 women  and social change  4–​5, 170–​1 see also DPRK defectors women’s human rights  activism  see DPRK women’s human rights activism in DPRK  170–​3, 175 importance of  134–​5 Women’s Rights Act (2010)  5 Wright, M.W.  14, 92 Wuthnow, R.  162 Y Yang, J.  73, 90 Yeo, A.  6, 22–​3 Yeonjwaje  14, 28n7 Yuval-​Davis, N.  12 Z Zhang, S.  83–​4 Zhang Zai  160

189