N. Korean defectors sold as brides in China want kids back
SEOUL, Korea, Republic Of — After fleeing North Korea to avoid extreme poverty and oppression, the young woman allowed a stranger to arrange a marriage for her with a rural Chinese farmer because she had nowhere to go. An even more painful decision came later.
She said severe abuse by her husband, including once being tied to a post, and the constant fear police would send her back to the North to face torture and prison convinced her that she needed to flee to South Korea. She decided she had to make the risky journey alone, leaving behind the young daughter she had with her Chinese husband.
“My heart has been torn apart,” the 35-year-old said of the daughter she left in the northeastern Chinese town of Longjing nearly 10 years ago, when the girl was 4. “I heard from my Chinese husband that my daughter cried herself to sleep and searched for me until she turned 8.”
She asked to be identified only by her surname, Kim, out of fear that publicity about her past would destroy her life in the South, where she has remarried and has two other children.