Take my breath away

It’s been a while since I wrote anything about human trafficking but the pain it brings to my heart when I hear stories and learn new facts about that “industry” is just as strong as ever. A few mornings ago I was doing what we all seem to spend so much of our time doing nowadays, i.e scrolling through Instagram, making myself late for getting up and on with my day. I don’t know what your scroll searches look like but mine tend to be comedic skits. Once I see something that makes me laugh I cant wait to scroll onto the next one, and the next one, and the next one………..

But on this particular morning something popped up in that morning scroll that I wasn’t at all prepared for. I think I had just finished giggling at a Graham Norton clip when a video came up of a North Korean woman giving a talk. She was standing at a lectern and her first words were: “I was sold to a human trafficker as a sex slave”. I cant lie, ashamedly I almost kept scrolling. It was at such odds to the jovial and easygoing morning I was having, snuggled under the covers with my dog curled up next to me, that I momentarily thought about not letting this video touch me. Thankfully it was only momentary and the next moment I was listening. The speaker that I had come across is called Yeonmi Park. You may well have heard of her as she is a TED Speaker and a public figure who raises awareness for the terror that Kim Jong Un reigns over North Korea and one of the ways in which she does that is by sharing her story.

In just a few minutes I learned not only that she was kept as a sex slave from the age of 13-15 years, but also that she considered herself to be one of the lucky ones because many woman in North Korea are in fact sold to organ harvesters. If you get sold into the sex slave trade there is at least a chance you will stay alive. North Korean women are being sold to China and currently there are about 300,000 North Korean women there who have been sold as slaves. In China if you need an organ transplant it is possible to have the operation done with 2 hours of finding out you need it because these women are being killed to provide for the illegal surgeries.

Honestly, it made my blood run cold to think that a survivor of sex trafficking could for one moment think that she was one of the lucky ones. It can take years for survivors of sex trafficking to heal. Their whole lives are taken from them both physically and mentally. They lose their families and their loved ones, often never to see them again and subjected to the most vile and horrendous torture, yet we live in a world where this can even be considered a luxury in comparison to what else could happen to you.

So what is Yeonmi’s story? Her sister was smuggled into China, with a promise of safety from the North Korean government. A few weeks later Yeonmi and her mother were also smuggled into China. What they found when they got there was not the promise of freedom and a better life but entrapment into the slave trade. Yeonmi was threatened with rape almost immediately but her mother took her place to spare her daughter the trauma. Her mother was then sold into marriage to a Chinese farmer. Yeonmi was taken as a sex slave by a man who promised to reunite her with her family if she submitted to him. Eventually Yeonmi and her mother met another North Korean woman in the same position as themselves and together they found out that there were Christian missionaries in China who could smuggle them into South Korea where they would be able to seek asylum. This was the beginning of Yeonmi’s journey to freedom, although it took years to get there. It would be seven years before she would see her sister again.

When she speaks of North Korea, Yeonmi describes how she felt towards Kim Jung Il (Kim Jung Un’s father):

“I thought Kim Jung Il was a god who could read my mind. I thought his spirit never dies and I never thought he was a normal human being.”

Rather than being a slave anymore, Yeonmi lives a life that threatens the North Korean government. She has been described by Pyongyang as a “poisonour mushroom” and a “human rights propaganda puppet” because she doesn’t shy away from speaking the truth and working with human rights organisations to try and get help to North Koreans.

Yeonmi now lives in America with her husband and two children and continues to speak out against Kim Jung Un and also to study human rights at the University of Columbia. Her story has a positive ending, although who knows if she, her mother or sister will ever truly be able to heal from their slavery. However, this is not the case for most. Most will never see freedom again.

Yeonmi’s story took my breath away. I hope it takes your breath away too. There isn’t a whole lot we can do to help, but being present and open to hearing these stories is a start. Not continuing to scroll when dark videos pop up in your feed. Listening is the first step. Sharing these stories and information is the next step. Please share Yeonmi’s story and do what little you can to be part of the change that is needed.