The #MeToo campaign is generating so much news in South Korea that it could be easy to forget that the same issues exist, to a greater degree, north of the border. Korea Future Initiative is a London-based organisation that rescues vulnerable North Koreans, reports and investigates human rights violations, and provides redress for exiles through transitional and conventional justice mechanisms, memory projects, and outreach programmes with exiled communities. KFI’s report, Us Too: Sexual Violence Against North Korean Women and Girls, documents how acts of sexual violence are perpetrated against females of every class, age, and status in North Korea, and was released on 8 March, International Women’s Day. According to KFI: “Legislation designed to protect women and girls is not just inadequate and unenforced, it is repeatedly bypassed by men with power, money, and political influence. A thinly disguised misogyny pervades all that the government touches, allowing perpetrators to find shelter in its institutions and society’s patriarchal conventions.”
The full report can be downloaded free from their website.
Update 22 August 2025: The report has been removed from the Korea Future website and has not been archived on the WayBack Machine. However, we managed to track down a copy and you can download it here. There is a similar report by Human Rights Watch entitled “You Cry at Night but Don’t Know Why: Sexual Violence against Women in North Korea” published in November 2018, which can be downloaded from HRW here.
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