North Korea child labor to be discussed at U.N. meeting

Feb. 9 (UPI) -- The issue of North Korea child labor is to be discussed at the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva on Friday, following multiple reports of child exploitation in the relatively isolated country.

According to Human Rights Watch and three other South Korean organizations on Wednesday, rights advocates are planning to hold a preliminary meeting with U.N. officials to address the dire situation of North Korean children and adolescents.

HRW, the South Korean nonprofit foundation International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea, the New Korea Women's Union, and the Caleb Mission, a South Korean church that aids defectors, claim Pyongyang has been abusing children and depriving them of opportunities.

The groups not only plan to discuss child labor, but also focus on the predicament of children of North Korean women stranded in third countries like China, corporal punishment in North Korea schools, and the forced labor ordinances that apply to children deemed to be of "inferior" class background, South Korean newspaper Kukmin Ilbo reported.

In Geneva, two North Korean teenage girls, Jeon Hyo-vin, 16, and Kim Eun-sol, 18, are expected to testify about the abuses.

Kim said she was required to engaged in forced labor while still in her teens. At age 13, she was working in a private home without pay because her grandmother was unable to support her and she had lost contact with her mother, who had left to live and work in China, according to HRW.

Jeon said she worked as a forced laborer on a daily basis and eventually dropped out of school.

Her father could not pay the funds required by the state.

Teens are forced to work on farms, construction projects and railroad renovations. They are regularly required to donate rabbit skins, presumably from animals they hunt, according to the Kukmin.

Children of families of "low" class background are often the target of forced labor, as well as children whose families cannot donate money to the regime.