North Korea is the world capital of slavery



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According to a new study, North Korea is the world capital of modern slavery. Home to nearly 2.6 million forced laborers, the most secretive nation has the highest prevalence of slavery of any country.

According to the 2018 World Bond Index, there would be about 40.3 million adult slaves and children in the world. It is estimated that 89 million people have suffered a form of slavery ranging from a few days to several years. Of those currently enslaved, about 70% are women.

The report, published by the Walk Free Foundation, interviewed 71,000 people in 48 countries during its research. He estimated that North Korea was the worst offender per capita, with one in ten citizens in modern slavery. The results were so shocking that the organization created a project dedicated to the badysis of forced labor in the hermit state.

 GettyImages- 114565667 Two North Korean children return home from school on a farm road in South Phyongan Province, North Korea, on April 28, 2011. AFP / Getty Images

Defectors, of whom 49 claimed to have suffered a form of slavery as children or adults. According to the researchers, these rights violations "do not represent mere excesses of the state, they are an essential component of the political system."

Institutionalized forced labor reaches all the way up to schoolchildren, who are forced to participate in "mobilizations". These common activities require children to do hard manual work for two months at a time, with work involving farm work or the collection of abandoned coal near railroad tracks. Schools are paid for work, but children do not earn anything. Those who refuse to participate risk a serious punishment.

"In the spring, we had to work for about a month during the summer when we weeded," said one interviewee. "We finished our clbades in the morning and then we spent the afternoon working, and in the autumn we worked longer for about two months because there was a lot of work badociated with the harvest."

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The picture is even worse for adults, who face hard labor in labor camps under the threat of famine. Those called for "battles" are sent to work between 70 and 100 days without interruption. Those who refuse are faced with a reduction in food rations or the badessment of their taxes. As one man told the researchers escaped: "If the head of the work unit orders you to go to work, you must do it. If you do not, then your food rations are cut off. " [19459] [19459] [19459] [19459] [194590][194590] [194590] [194590]  GettyImages -992646400 A woman is riding a bicycle on a dirt road, seen from a processional window carrying US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo while he makes his way to a Guest House at Pyongyang, North Korea, July 6, 2018. ANDREW HARNIK / AFP / Getty Images

Even Those Who Have a Job Have No Guarantees of wages – many workers would have their salaries withheld for donations to the scheme.North Koreans who are not officially employed risk being sent to dreaded labor camps.To avoid this fate, citizens will pay to be registered as employees and will remain in "jobs" that provide no income.

Co even explained a defector, "If I resigned, I would be caught. And if I did not go to work for more than two months and was taken out of work, the police office would conduct an investigation and be detained in a training camp. Usually, the detention period was six months.

Dr. Jang Jin Sung defected in 2004 and is now a Global Slavery Index panelist He told Telegraph that the power of state propaganda meant that many citizens did not even know that They were exploited.Jang was not spared from forced labor, even though he was the equivalent of the poet laureate of former leader Kim Jong Il.But like all the Jang believed that it was normal. "It's just life, that's how life works," he said. "You keep going with that." [19659002] According to David Fiona, head of research at the Minderoo Foundation who conducted the data collection for the project, relatives or friends of those considered subversive are particularly "dirty, dangerous, degrading" jobs "

" L & # 39; the image that emerges is as disturbing as it may be unique, "the report's authors write. "Although it is simply impossible to have access to a larger sample of workers in North Korea, there is no reason to doubt that the experiences of this group reflect the brutal reality of modern slavery perpetrated by the state. "

The results illustrate a system based on "state-sponsored forced labor" that "depends on these practices for its very survival," the researchers conclude.

The largest total number of slaves was in India, where an estimated 18.4 million slaves in its 1.3 billion population, reported Reuters. The Central African Republic of Burundi was also particularly affected by forced labor.

China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Uzbekistan were the rest of the five worst-performing countries, accounting for about 58 percent of the world's slave population. Africa was the worst region, with nearly eight in every 1,000 Africans, or about 9 million people, enslaved.

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