The evils of North Korea are well-chronicled: from its political prison camps to the needless and preventable starvation deaths of between 450,000 and 2 million people. That latter estimate comes from an exhaustive report by a U.N. Commission of Inquiry, which found the North Korean government responsible for “crimes against humanity, arising from ‘policies established at the highest level of State,’” including “extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.” 

What is less well-known, however, it that it is North Korea’s women — particularly those on the low rungs of the songbun system, which categorizes North Koreans by their fealty to the regime — who suffer the most. Many are forced into prostitution by extreme poverty. Due to the unavailability of medical care and drugs, some have turned to opium in the false hope that it can prevent sexually transmitted diseases. Thousands more flee to China as refugees and fall prey to traffickers.