She eventually managed to escape to South Korea, and, 20 years later, Lee reflected on her brief life as a pawn in the human and sex trafficking trade with a sense of relief. As the problem persists — with little repercussions against those who buy or sell women — Lee says she is one of the lucky ones.
"I'm sad about it for others trapped," she said, "and I'm angry."
While the exact number of North Korean defectors who are forced into human trafficking in China and other Asian nations is unclear, experts say there is an uptick in women who are leaving the North to defect to South Korea.
In 1998, at the height of a famine that ravaged North Korea, just 12 percent of the nearly 950 North Korean defectors were women, according to the South Korean government's Ministry of Unification.
In 2017, an estimated 83 percent of the more than 1,120 North Koreans who defected were female.
Source: Yahoo News
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