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by Erik Ortiz / Feb. 23, 2018 / 10:00 AM null / Updated
Feb. 23, 2018 / 10:02 AM null

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">SEOUL, South Korea - color="navy"> color="navy">Lee Meng Zu was 18 when she illegally entered the hinterlands
of China, lured by the promise of a dishwashing job at a restaurant that surreptitiously
employed North Koreans.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">In 1998, after crossing a river near her home in North Korea's
Hamgyong Province, she said she learned the awful truth: The restaurant owner
was buying her as a bride for one of his sons. She's not sure the exact amount
the man paid the broker, but Lee learned that other women in similar positions
were worth about $1,000 to $2,000.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="blue">“It's all very embarrassing,” style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy"> Lee said Thursday through a translator. style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="blue">“It was never my will to be sold.”

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lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="olive">▲ Lee Meng Zu defected from North Korea to South Korea in 2008
after she was initially the victim of human trafficking. She now lives in Seoul.Brock
Stoneham / NBC News

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">She eventually managed to escape to South Korea, and, 20 years
later, Lee reflected on her brief life as a pawn in the human and sex trafficking
trade with a sense of relief. As the problem persists - color="navy"> color="navy">with little repercussions against those who buy or sell women
- color="navy"> color="navy">Lee says she is one of the lucky ones.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="blue">“I'm sad about it for others trapped,” style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy"> she said, color="blue"> “and I'm angry.”

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">While the exact number of North Korean defectors who are forced
into human trafficking in China and other Asian nations is unclear, experts
say there is an uptick in women who are leaving the North to defect to South
Korea.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">In 1998, at the height of a famine that ravaged North Korea, just
12 percent of the nearly 950 North Korean defectors were women, according to
the South Korean government's Ministry of Unification.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">In 2017, an estimated 83 percent of the more than 1,120 North
Koreans who defected were female.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">That switch has taken place over the past several years, observers
say, as women generally have an easier time going unnoticed when they cross
into China.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">In addition, North Korean women are wanted as sex slaves or to
be married off in China, which has 30 million more men than women, government
data shows.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">Liberty in North Korea, a nongovernmental organization that has
aided in more than 700 refugee rescues, says women who flee also live in fear
of being sent back to the North because the Chinese government forcibly repatriates
North Koreans. They might be tortured, forced to undergo an abortion if they
became pregnant by a Chinese man, or interned in a prison camp, according to
the group.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">The experiences of North Korean defectors are often difficult
to verify.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">Sokeel Park, the Seoul-based director of research and strategy
for Liberty in North Korea, said the women are caught between two dire extremes:
remaining in China against their will or being rescued by the Chinese only to
be sent back to North Korea.

color="blue">“If you're a North Korean woman who has been trafficked, you
can't just run away,” color="navy">Park said. color="blue"> “If you're being exploited or abused or in sex work, you don't
want to go to the police. That vulnerability is what contributes to this continued
exploitation.”

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">He added that while the international community, including the
United Nations, has come down on China in recent months for failing to adequately
fight human trafficking and protect refugee defectors, there's nothing to suggest
the government in Beijing will change course.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="blue">“This is just so bad. There's no other way of saying it,” lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">
color="navy">Park said.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">Related: How one North Korea defector is helping other refugees

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">As a teenager in the North, Lee said, she went to a school that
groomed entertainers, with dreams of being selected to sing and dance on state-run
television or before important figures in the Kim family regime.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">The height requirement was just over 5-foot-2. She was about 2
inches too short.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">Desperation during North Korea's famine of the 1990s made her
realize that opportunities were ultimately limited if she couldn't rise in the
ranks of society. Some estimated that more than 2 million people died in one
of modern history's rare peacetime famines.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">Lee heard from Chinese-Korean businessmen who would visit her
grandmother's market about job opportunities across the border. That's how she
ended up being sold as a bride. But the restaurant owner's son, whom she was
to marry, was still in the army and had yet to return, she said.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">In the nick of time, Lee made her escape.

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lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="olive">▲ color="olive">People make their way along a railway track near Chongjin in
the Hamgyong Province on North Korea's northeast coast on Nov. 21, 2017.ED JONES
/ AFP - Getty Images

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">She and a cousin who had also fled North Korea ended up meeting
other Koreans in China. In 1999, Lee said, she got passage on a ship that allowed
people without passports to travel to South Korea. But the ship was infiltrated
by North Korean officers who ended up sending them back.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">Lee said she was thrown into a North Korean prison, but because
she was still a teenager, they released her after one month.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">Undeterred by her experience of being bought and captured, she
reconnected with her family, and explained how China's shift to capitalism could
afford a better life. She said her father gave her the equivalent of $20 - style="font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy"> color="navy">enough to bribe a North Korean military guard to let her cross
the border.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">Once in China, she was on her own. She eventually met a South
Korean man living in China with whom she had a son, ultimately staying in the
country for nine years

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">After they broke up, Lee found work as a tour guide in the city
of Shenyang, about 235 miles from the North Korean border. She said she met
producers of a documentary who introduced her to a faith-based group called
Durihana and its businessman-turned-Christian pastor, Ki-won Chun, who had helped
North Korean refugees start fresh in South Korea since 1999.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">Chun said about 99 percent of defectors to China enter the country
via human trafficking.

color="blue">“Because there's high demand for women in China, people in China
will pay border patrol to bring women over,” style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">
he added. color="blue"> “The North Koreans know that they're being sold when they escape,
so they naturally fall into human trafficking.”

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">Chun has become one of South Korea's best-known advocates for
rescuing North Korean refugees, earning the nickname the style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="blue"> “Asian Schindler,”
color="navy">after Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who is credited
with saving Jewish workers from the Nazis during World War II.

color="blue">“North Korea announces that they'll kill me once or twice a year,” lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">
color="navy">Chun said.
“ color="blue">China is emphatic about wanting to capture me.”

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lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="olive">▲ color="olive">South Korean pastor Ki-won Chun speaks at Durihana church in
Seoul on Feb.18, 2018. Chun has been helping North Korean refugees defect to
South Korea since 1999.Brock Stoneham for NBC News

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">His group has helped hundreds of people like Lee settle into South
Korea, where the government temporarily houses and educates defectors before
giving them financial assistance.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">Lee changed her name after arriving in the South in 2008, but
still fears reprisals by the North Korean government against her parents and
a sister living there.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">In South Korea, Lee met a man through her job as an office assistant.
On their first date, he took her to a movie. They married in 2011 and have two
sons.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="blue">“I felt like he was being protective of me,” lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy"> she said.
color="blue">“I'm lucky.”

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">Today, Lee has found salvation in Seoul. While she never got to
be an entertainer, she isn't shy about picking up a guitar and singing the South
Korean songs that she secretly learned while growing up in the North.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">While recently watching the Winter Olympics, taking place about
80 miles to the east in the mountain resort of PyeongChang, she saw a group
of North Korean musicians on television performing as part of the North's Olympic
delegation.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">She said she remembered those long-forgotten melodies, thought
of the family she may never see again, and cried. width="20" height="13" border="0">