Chosun Ilbo Produces Four-Part Documentary on N. Korean Refugees

[Update: OK, that TBS network that’s showing this series turns out not to be this one, but a Japanese network. I’ll let you know about U.S. broadcast times when I hear more.]

Yesterday, I wrote about a disturbing economic trend in North Korea that I hadn’t known previously — the regime’s practice of lending food at usurious interest rates. The original report from Good Friends doesn’t specifically say what the penalty for non-payment is, but it must be starvation or worse, since women are willing to sell themselves into sexual slavery to help their families repay those loans: 

A 26-year-old North Korean woman, Mun Yun-hee crossed the Duman or Tumen River into China in the dawn of Oct. 22 last year, which at that point was some 40 m wide, guided by a human trafficker. She was being sold to a single middle-aged Chinese farmer into a kind of indentured servitude-cum-companionship. Both of them wore only panties, having stored their trousers and shoes in bags, because if you are found wearing wet clothes across the river deep at night, it is a dead giveaway that you are a North Korean refugee.

Mun was led to a hideout, and the agent left. Asked why she crossed the river, she replied, “My father starved to death late in the 1990s, and my mother is blind from hunger.” Her family owed 300 kg of corns, beans and rice and sold herself for the sake of her blind mother and a younger brother. The middleman paid her 350 yuan, or W46,000 (US$1=W939), equivalent to half of the grain debt. [Chosun Ilbo]

This except describes “On The Border,” which looks to be a very interesting documentary about the trafficking of North Korean women, the comfort women of our time. The Chosun Ilbo says that its team of reporters “spent 10 months, sometimes at considerable risk, gathering the material” for the series. It’s already showing on TBS (more here). The BBC will also run the series.

The Chosun Ilbo producers were apparently aware of this documentary’s political implications, enough so that they paid a visit to Capitol Hill. I have a friend there who saw part of the video and spoke with someone involved in the production. My friend is a reliable source, but of course, this information is third-hand. The video, taken on the border just last fall, shows both human trafficking and drug smuggling.  The documentary’s release was time so that it would not appear until after the South Korean election and the inauguration of the new President. Apparently, the Chosun didn’t want to be accused of trying to influence the presidential election. They were also worried about hearing from the friendly folks in the Ministry of Culture, possibly the same friendly folks who allegedly reached out to the producers of Yoduk Story.

With Comrade Chung, the Red Guards, and various Ministry of Truth types out of the way, expect to see less Sunshine, but more daylight.