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The Christianity Today women's blog provides news and analysis from the perspective of evangelical women. We cover news stories and books related to international justice and evangelism, pregnancy and sexual ethics, marriage, parenting, and celibacy, pop culture, health and body image, raising girls, and women in the church and parachurch.

Her.meneutics is edited by associate editor Katelyn Beaty and online editor Sarah Pulliam Bailey.

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June 10, 2009

Journalists Slammed for Covering N. Korean Women's Hell

Laura Ling and Euna Lee were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for reporting on women who are 'sold like livestock' in China.

LaVonne Neff

On Monday, journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in a North Korean prison. This morning, Blaine Harden in The Washington Post shares the probable reason: they were researching an article on the plight of women who, fleeing famine and poverty in North Korea, crossed the border into China. (You may have to create an account to read the Post article, but the account is free and takes only a minute to set up.)

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Many of these refugee women ended up "being sold like livestock in China," according to one refugee who was sold in marriage to three men, sent back to North Korea, permanently maimed from a police beating, and then sent to a labor camp that she characterized as "hell on earth."

Actually, says a South Korean human-rights researcher, most of the women are much better off in China than they were in North Korea. If they stay with the men who buy them, they are given adequate food and housing. However, they and most of their children have no legal status. Without residency papers, the women can be deported at any moment - back to North Korea, where they will be treated as criminals. Their undocumented children, who will remain with their Chinese fathers, may not be able to go to school.

Tina Lambert, advocacy director of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a U.K.-based human-rights group, called upon North Korea to "rescind this unjust sentence and to grant Laura Ling and Euna Lee's immediate release. . . . We urge the United Nations to boldly condemn and extensively investigate these concerns at all levels of its system, including the Security Council, as a matter of utmost importance."

Google "Christianity and women's rights" and you'll find plenty of evidence for the church's relative shortcomings in this area. But note that North Korea and China are both officially atheistic countries. When I get impatient with the church's slowness in treating women and men equally, I'll remind myself of that.

Meanwhile, let's all pray for Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty on June 10, 2009 10:26 AM

Comments

This is an important story and it's good to remind us of the horrors that women all over the world suffer, particularly for those of us who live in relative safety, security, freedom and (for most) economic sufficiency (if not more) here in the US. My prayers for the refugee women, for the 2 reporters heroically trying to tell their stories, for their loved ones, and for Pres. Obama and Sec. Clinton for wisdom in their efforts to address the problem.

That the evil dictators in North Korea and China are acting, surprise, like evil dictators, though, does not make me feel any more patient about the church men in this country who, raised in freedom and democracy, still cannot, almost 40 years after the start of the women's movement and almost 10 years after the start of a new millenium, accept the simple concept that women and men, both being created in the image of God, deserve equal rights and equal treatment. Unfortunately, some of these men (and, sadly, women) are with CT.

Posted By: Christian Lawyer | June 10, 2009 9:58 PM

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