Slavery: Defector casts N. Korean cheer squad in different light

by WorldTribune Staff, February 25, 2018

Members of Kim Jong-Un’s cheerleading squads, one of which was dispatched to the 2018 Winter Olympics, are routinely forced into sexual slavery, according to a former North Korean soldier who defected.

North Korea’s cheer squad at the 2018 Winter Olympics. / Getty Images

“It might seem like a fancy show on the outside [but] they also have to go to parties and provide sexual services,” Lee So-Yeon, a military musician who fled North Korea in 2008, told Bloomberg.

“They go to the central Politburo party’s events, and have to sleep with the people there, even if they don’t want it,” Lee said.

“Those sorts of human-rights infringements take place, where women have to follow what they are told to do with their bodies.”

The cheerleaders, who are unpaid and guarded 24 hours a day, also are arrested and imprisoned if they do anything wrong, according to reports by several news organizations.

In 2006, 21 cheerleaders were reportedly sent to a prison camp for discussing their trip to South Korea after they returned home.

The North’s Olympic athletes are always followed, even when they use the toilet, and have round-the-clock security who are charged with tackling them if they try to run away, the reports said.

Kim Hyung-Soo, the father of a former North Korean skier, said: “Even the coaches are slaves to Kim Jong-Un and to the North Korean regime. The athletes and the cheerleaders, too. They are all Kim Jong-Un and North Korea’s slaves.”


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