Joy's Story: Part 2 - Trafficked in China
In the first part of her story, Joy shared the details of her life in North Korea and how she made her daring escape. Read "Part 1 - Growing Up in North Korea".
After I finally got picked up by the broker, we got onto a bus. The bus got stopped by Chinese police twice and every time the police came aboard I pretended to be asleep.
I was ready to take the opium pill I had stashed in the collar of my shirt and end my life if I got caught, but thankfully I didn’t have to.
I got some rest for a couple of hours after I arrived at the house and then I was connected with the second broker. The second broker was a North Korean defector. I told her that I wanted to live with an old Chinese couple as their foster granddaughter. She shook her head and told me my only option was to be sold into marriage to a Chinese man so all the brokers who helped me escape could take my bridal cost as payment.
I couldn't even think of refusing because I was afraid the brokers would do something bad to me or drop me off somewhere alone to get caught by the Chinese police and sent back to North Korea. I had also heard that if North Korean women refused to get married in China, then they could be sold to brothels or sex websites so that the brokers could receive payment. At that point, I realized that I was trapped and I didn’t have any other choice but to be trafficked. The second broker told me that I could escape after living with my Chinese husband for at least six months. If I escape in less than 6 months, the brokers that sold me would return my bridal money to the Chinese husband.
The second broker took me to different small towns to sell me. Every time I went to a town, many old Chinese men gathered around me to bargain my bridal cost. I felt so ashamed. I was being treated as an animal and not as a human being.
The North Korean broker finally found a man who was willing to pay the amount the broker wanted for me as a bride. I couldn’t even communicate with him because I didn’t speak the language. I remembered looking at the broker’s face. She seemed to pity me. My whole being at the moment was filled with so much bitterness, hopelessness, and sorrow toward everything in the world.
I felt like I was losing everything including my own body to someone I didn’t even know. I was only 18.
Continue reading Part 3 of Joy's story where she shares about her escape from the Chinese man and her rescue journey through LiNK's networks.
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VIDEO: How Foreign Media Changed My Life - Joo Yang
While growing up in North Korea, Joo Yang would listen to foreign broadcasts on an illegal radio with her family. They listened to broadcasts from Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, Far East Broadcasting Company, and South Korean news channels for 10 years while preparing to defect despite the danger of being caught and sent to a prison camp. This was just the first of her many access points to foreign media.
When the rest of her family escaped in 2007 and 2008, Joo Yang had to stay behind. "I tried to defect once in 2009 but failed, but my father sent me money, so I went to another town and bribed the officials so I could attend college and stay safe. At that time, my family smuggled a package to me from South Korea. They sent a Toshiba laptop, MP3 and MP4 players, and an electronic dictionary. All of my university friends had MP3 and MP4 players, but we could only use them in secrecy, hidden from the teachers and security officials, under our blankets at night," she said.
Joo Yang successfully escaped in 2010. She now interns part-time at LiNK's office in South Korea and participates on the popular South Korean television program "Now on My Way to Meet You," which aims to bridge the gap between North and South Koreans.
Watch her video to learn more about her life, as well as how she used foreign media and what effect it had on her.
