North and South Korea According to the 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report

While I was gone, the U.S. State Department released the 2009 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, revealing few surprises in terms of North Korea’s record on the issue. The DPRK remains a Tier 3 country meaning “the government does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so.

Furthermore, in 2009 “[t]he North Korean government made no significant efforts to prevent human trafficking. It did not acknowledge the existence of human rights problems, including trafficking in persons.

Here’s the link to the DPRK report. (Scroll down.)

All this isn’t surprising but is nonetheless tragic. And what is just as tragic is South Korea’s apathy toward the human rights issue in North Korea.

An interview with Chicago-based human rights worker Mike Kim shows that although Lee Myung Bak has taken a first step toward addressing the long-ignored issue by last year co-sponsoring a U.N. resolution of the DPRK’s human rights violation, there seems to be a lack of interest in the cause in South Korea:

“I get the feeling after having given talks in England, Canada, Japan and the U.S. that South Korea has the lowest interest in human rights,” Kim, 32, said. “I’ve been invited to give talks by three groups in Seoul, all expats. Not one South Korean group has invited me.

In case you were wondering, South Korea was ranked a Tier 1 country, meaning “[t]he Government of the Republic of Korea fully complies with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. This doesn’t mean, however, that the country is immune to the problem:

The Republic of Korea (ROK) is a source country for the trafficking of women and girls within the country and to the United States (often through Canada and Mexico), Japan, Hong Kong, Guam, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation. The ROK is a destination country for women from Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, and other Southeast Asian countries, some of whom are recruited to work on entertainment visas and may be vulnerable to trafficking for sexual exploitation or domestic servitude. Some brokers target poor women and runaways, pay off their debts, and then use this as leverage to force them to work in the commercial sex trade. Labor trafficking is a problem in South Korea, and some employers allegedly withhold the passports and wages of foreign workers, a practice that can be used as a means to subject workers to forced labor. One foreign embassy alleged that some of its citizens sign contracts for employment in their home country, but have their contracts destroyed upon arrival in Korea, where they are forced to work excessively long hours. An increasing challenge for the ROK is the number of women from less developed countries who are recruited for marriage to Korean men through international marriage brokers; limitations on citizenship and anecdotal reports of fraudulent brokers mean some of these women may be vulnerable to trafficking. Some, upon arrival in South Korea, may be subjected to conditions of sexual exploitation, debt bondage, and involuntary servitude. South Korean men reportedly continue to be a source of demand for child sex tourism in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.

The entire write-up for the ROK can be accessed here. (Scroll down.)