Report Finds Surprisingly High Rate of Slavery in Developed Countries

UNITED NATIONS — Yeonmi Park calls herself a former slave from North Korea. She had never seen a world map. She nearly starved. After she underwent appendix surgery without anesthesia at age 13, Park recalled, she saw human bodies piled outside the hospital, their eyes eaten by rats.

Convinced she would die in North Korea, Park said, she and her mother fled to China, where human traffickers sold her for $200. Two years later, after escaping by walking across the Gobi Desert into Mongolia, Park found refuge in South Korea. She has no idea what happened to her North Korean relatives, Park said.

“The scariest thing for me that night crossing the desert,” she said, “was being forgotten. No one knows that I existed in this world.”

Park, 24, now a student at Columbia University in New York, recalled her ordeal Thursday at a news conference held at the United Nations to publicize a new survey about modern slavery — a broad term used by rights activists that includes forced labor, forced marriage and sexual exploitation.

The survey, known as the Global Slavery Index, was started five years ago by an Australia-based rights group called the Walk Free Foundation. Based on thousands of interviews and other research, the index measures the extent of modern slavery and the steps taken to combat it, country by country.

The 2018 edition of the index estimates that more than 40 million people around the world are trapped in modern slavery — including what Walk Free called a surprisingly high number in developed nations like the United States, France, Germany and others.

“Given these are also the countries taking the most action to respond to modern slavery, this does not mean these initiatives are in vain,” the survey said. “It does, however, underscore that even in countries with seemingly strong laws and systems, there are critical gaps in protections for groups such as irregular migrants, the homeless, workers in the shadow or gig economy, and certain minorities.”

In the United States, more than 400,000 people, or 1 in 800, are living in modern slavery, the report said. The United States is also the largest importer of what the report called “at-risk” products, or those at least partly manufactured by workers engaged in forced labor.

These products, estimated to be worth at least $354 billion, include mobile phones, computers, clothing and food like fish and cocoa, the report said. The United States imports more than 40 percent of the total.

“Modern slavery is a First World problem,” said Andrew Forrest, an Australian businessman and a co-founder of the Walk Free Foundation. “If you are a chief executive or an investor and you are not prepared to take human rights into account now, you don’t deserve to be a chief executive or an investor.”

The survey identified North Korea as having the highest prevalence of modern slavery. Of its 25 million population, roughly 1 in 10 are classified as modern slaves. The North Korean state compels many children and adults to work in agriculture, construction and road building without pay in “communal labor,” the report said.

Eritrea, the isolated African nation that until recently had been at war with neighboring Ethiopia, has the second-highest prevalence of modern slavery, the survey said. Others with high rates include Burundi, the Central African Republic and Afghanistan.

Park, who wept as she was recounting her own escape, called the survey “a significant step” in publicizing the problem.

“These people simply were born in the wrong place and that’s what they are being punished for — their birthplace,” she said.