Stay or flee: Sold NKorean brides face hard choices in China

Thousands of North Korea women over the past decades have been trafficked across their country’s border and sold as brides to Chinese men. (Photo by John Pavelka/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

WESTERN LIAONING PROVINCE, China — Thousands of North Korea women over the past decades have been trafficked across their country’s border and sold as brides to Chinese men.

The Associated Press spoke with trafficked North Korean women and Chinese husbands to tell a story that’s largely ignored.

Most of the women were lured by brokers who promised them jobs but then sold them to Chinese men.

Some of the North Koreans get along with their new families and are satisfied with their new life in China. Others are abused by their husbands or ignored or mocked by their new relatives and neighbours. Others have risked the perilous journey to South Korea — with some having to make the heart-wrenching choice to leave children behind again, this time in China.