Seattle Times Op-Ed on Human Trafficking

James J. Na, who somehow finds the time to run two excellent blogs–“Guns and Butter Blog,” gunsandbutter.blogspot.com, and “The Asianist,” www.asianist.blogspot.com–has a new guest column on the trafficking of North Korean women and the State Department’s foot-dragging on carrying out the directives of the North Korean Human Rights Act.

Timothy Peters of Helping Hands Korea, a Christian relief project, complained that, despite the intent of the law to help North Korean defectors, the State Department has been “seriously out of step with the spirit and letter” of the act, and “not a single North Korean refugee has been assisted” in asylum-seeking since the passage of the law, leaving them to the mercy of Chinese police, North Korean agents and human traffickers.

Scholte, a leading advocate for North Korean defectors, is emphatic about what the U.S. should do. Her prescriptions include fully implementing the North Korea Human Rights Act, pressuring China to allow access to the refugees, and funding organizations willing to help, including North Korea Free Radio and others that relay the truth about the outside world to North Koreans.

And what about the truth of what’s happening inside the North? North Korean women are forced to make desperate decisions to stay alive and feed their children:

As for Cha and Ma, they are simply thankful to have their daughters back. Despite having been a victim of sexual slavery, Cha apologized to her dead husband — for living, in order to save her children. Cha’s final words were: “If I ever see my husband in the other side… I want to be his wife again. I want to pray for so many girls who suffered and wasted their lives in China and other countries.”

Short of telling the news media that these women are Muslims under U.S. occupation, I wonder what you could add to make that story compelling enough for most of them to care? Where are the feminists?

Read the rest on your own.