Identified as Ri and Kang, aged 39 and 43, they were helping other women escape to South Korea. Brought into China as victims of trafficking, they were murdered after a public trial, confirmed by several sources.
Seoul (/Agencies) – In Chongjin, a port city in the northeast of North Korea, the death sentences were carried out on two North Korean women aged 39 and 43, accused of having helped other women escape to South Korea after being repatriated from China. These are the first executions reported since Beijing resumed the forced repatriation of North Koreans in October 2023, the ministry said. Radio Free Asia.
The two women, identified by the surnames Ri and Kang, had been accused of sending groups of fugitives to South Korea, considered an “enemy country.” According to Jang Se-yul, director of the Seoul-based Gyeore’e Unification Solidarity organization, Ri and Kang were initially sold to an adult entertainment business in China. “When other North Koreans working there said they wanted to go to South Korea, they arranged for them to escape,” Jang added.
Among them was the younger sister of one of the two women sentenced to death, who said she managed to escape to South Korea with the help of her sister. The latter was captured by a Chinese intermediary while she herself was trying to escape to the South. She helped North Korean women escape by running a business with her Chinese husband in Longjing, Jilin province, China. “She cried a lot,” Jang said, referring to her younger sister. “It seems that her sister saved many escapees and sent them to South Korea.”
On August 31, nine other women were sentenced to life in prison on the same charges. They were all part of a group of about 500 North Korean citizens repatriated from China, a practice that several refugee rights organizations have called for to stop, explaining that those returned to North Korea often face severe punishments, including imprisonment in labor camps or, as in this case, execution. Beijing responds that it is obliged to do so under bilateral agreements with Pyongyang.
The death sentences were confirmed by several sources, including a resident of the Chinese border town of Hoeryong who was visiting Chongjin, 70 kilometers away. He told RFA that the public trial began at 11 a.m., lasted about an hour, and ended with the Social Security Bureau of North Hamgyong Province deciding to proceed immediately with the execution. Suzanne Scholte, chairwoman of the US-based Freedom Coalition for North Korea, also reported that the executions were discussed at a recent meeting of the association. And a North Korean defector living in South Korea also claimed to have received the news from relatives in the North. Jang Se-yul himself said he learned of the death sentences through “Freedom Chosun,” an online media outlet run by North Korean refugees, which reconstructed the details of the incident.
The incident has caused concern among North Korean refugees and human rights activists, who fear that other women repatriated from China could face the same treatment. Most North Koreans who have fled to China are estimated to be women, often victims of sexual exploitation or forced into forced marriages with Chinese men. Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, more than 34,000 people, 72% of them women, have managed to escape to South Korea.
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