In February this year the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea published its report. Its findings included large-scale sexual abuses, mostly directed at women, across all sectors of society.

“Witnesses have testified that violence against women is not limited to the home, and that it is common to see women being beaten and sexually assaulted in public,” the report officially said.

Regardless of who you speak to about North Korean women – researchers, activists, journalists, academics – one thing is clear: North Korean women are subject to abuse on a monumentally