Prevalence,
Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children In the first decade of the 21st Century gvnet.com/streetchildren/NorthKorea.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
and accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the
situation in HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on
this page and others to see which aspect(s) of street life are of particular
interest to you. You might be
interested in exploring how children got there, how they survive, and how
some manage to leave the street.
Perhaps your paper could focus on how some street children abuse the
public and how they are abused by the public … and how they abuse each
other. Would you like to write about
market children? homeless children? Sexual and labor exploitation? begging? violence? addiction? hunger? neglect? etc. There is a lot to the subject of Street
Children. Scan other countries as well
as this one. Draw comparisons between
activity in adjacent countries and/or regions. Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. Teachers Check out some of
the Resources
for Teachers attached to this website. ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** Refugee Orphan:
North Koreans Must Live on in Hope Kim So Yeol, Daily NK, 2008-09-29 www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk02500&num=4115 [accessed 28 June
2011] [The following is
the interview with Park] CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE
LIVING CONDITIONS IN YOUR HOMETOWN? - “Since I was born, the food situation in
North Korea has been in dire straits. From 1997, the situation became more
severe. Since 1994, when I was 10, I started selling in the market, indeed
there were many young children who traveled to other regions to make a
living. I would take the train from Suncheon, South Pyongan
Province to Kimchaek, North Hamkyung
Province and sell goods. I was an ‘itinerant merchant.’ I would bring an empty bag from home, buy
notebooks in Suncheon, go back to Kimchaek and sell
them there, then buy cheap salt in Kimchaek, and
sell it in Suncheon. A bag full of salt weighed approximately 15kg. Whenever I rode the train, there were 6 or
7 other children in the same car who were also selling goods. On unlucky
days, we would have to climb on to the roof of the train and ride that way.
Some children died from falling or from being electrocuted.” WERE THERE MANY SUCH
CHILDREN IN NORTH KOREA AT THE TIME? - “There were a lot of street children (kotjebi) that had to get by without any help. There would
be a black crowd of them at every station. They were really black because not
only were the school uniforms at that time black, but the children could not
wash themselves.” In Suncheon station
alone, the number of children always exceeded 100. The street children
organized themselves into groups of two or three and would steal food from
people at the station, but others ended up starving to death or had to wait
for someone to give them food.” ***
ARCHIVES *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61612.htm [accessed 10
February 2020] CHILDREN
- The
state provides 11 years of free compulsory education for all children.
However, in the past some children were denied educational opportunities and
subjected to punishments and disadvantages as a result of the loyalty
classification system and the principle of "collective retribution"
for the transgressions of family members. Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, 4 June 2004 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/korea2004.html [accessed 14
December 2010] [58] The Committee
is concerned that, according to the State party information, there are some
children from the Democratic People’s Committee
on Rights of Child Considers Report of Democratic People's Republic of [Article headline is
mislabeled United Nations Press
Release, 1 June 2004 www.hrea.org/lists/child-rights/markup/msg00294.html [accessed 24 July
2011] The situation of
street children was a new phenomenon in the country, the delegation said.
Many of the children came from mountainous regions after having escaped from
their families. Those street children were taken care of by the State and
were sent to institutions where they could get vocational training. Chinese Websites
Expose inside Photos of North Korea Han Young Jin, Daily
NK, 2006-08-24 www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk00100&num=1020 [accessed 28 June
2011] Recently, inside
photos of melancholic North Korean people and starving street children are
rampantly spreading throughout hundreds of Chinese internet sites including
sonic BBS, sina.com and sinotrip. Street kids at Jangmadang live by begging and eating food scraps. In
order to remove street children, on September 27th 2001, Kim Jong Il directed
street children be accommodated at ‘9.27 institution.’ However, the
institution was uniformly controlled by local authorities and as a result was
ultimately established as a national women’s inn. Although world food
organizations of each country assist with food rations, supplies must surpass
regulations. Food assistance that should be distributed to the people is
being sold at Jangmadang. Action Against
Hunger Stops Its Activities In Action Against
Hunger, 10 Mar 2000 [accessed 28 June
2011] 3/ Most of the
malnutrition cases witnessed by our team was amongst
children with no access to any facilities. Those who were especially hard hit
were the « street children », many of whom were between 3 and 4 years old,
and found wandering alone, while visibly very weak and fighting to collect
food. Japanese
TV Airs Interview with NK Foster Children Life Funds for North
Korean Refugees LFNKR, 2002 www.northkoreanrefugees.com/fosterkids1.htm [accessed 28 June
2011] "A boy, about
15, lies dead on the street. All his belongings are gone." So begins the
documentary. But not all street children
die in Prison Video from One Free freekorea.us/2005/01/15/prison-video-from-north-korea/ [accessed 28 June
2011] … another file, entitled Documentary:
"Children of the Closed State" Azgar Ishkildin,
Prima News Agency, 2.8.2001 At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 28 June
2011] They pick up grains
of rice and kernels of corn and suck on discarded fish bones. Around them,
Western humanitarian aid is bought and sold-American corn, wheat from the Red
Cross, rice. The price for the wheat, written on a piece of cardboard, is 80
won per kilogram. That is the average monthly wage of a North Korean worker.
Most of the customers are members of the military. Protection Project
Report - The www.protectionproject.org/human_rights_reports/report_documents/nk.doc [accessed 2009] Street children
from North
Koreans Starved Of Right To Food Jim Lobe, Inter
Press Service News Agency IPS, www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/FA22Dg01.html [accessed 28 June
2011] The lack of access
to food has had the greatest impact on children, because of both malnutrition
and the loss of parents who have died of malnutrition or related illness.
Unconfirmed reports have said hundreds of orphans are now living in
institutions or have become street children, without access to food aid or
state protection. 2005 Annual Report
for Amnesty
International At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 28 June
2011] NORTH KOREAN
ASYLUM-SEEKERS IN All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
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ARTICLES. Cite this webpage as: Patt,
Prof. Martin, "Street Children – DPRK ( |
