NK Human Rights

[Anchor Lead]

In our first story of the day, the United States has named North Korea among the worst human trafficking countries for the 14th year in a row in an annual State Department report. Here’s more on the status of human rights in the North.

[Pkg]

The U.S. State Department has defined North Korea as the source of forced labor and prostitution in its annual Trafficking in Persons Report 2016. It is estimated in the report that as many as 120,000 people are locked up in North Korean prison camps for political prisoners.

[Soundbite] John Kerry (U.S. Secretary of State)

The State Department pointed out that most of the prisoners were incarcerated without fair trial and suffer from beating, torture, sexual assaults, and forced labor under harrowing conditions. Also, North Korean workers sent overseas receive outrageously low wages but are subjected to dangerous labor over long periods of time. The American authorities also pointed out the brutal human rights situation in North Korea is driving its residents to flee across the border and encouraging human trafficking. Nearly 10,000 North Korean women have escaped from the country, but a large number of them are subjected to kidnapping, prostitution and forced labor. This year's report is likely to provide meaningful evidence to the efforts to extend the sanctions on North Korea to the area of human rights.