A new report from Human Rights Watch which says that children of North Korean women living in China and their Chinese spouses are denied basic rights due to their mothers’ illegal status. From the Los Angeles Times:
The numbers of affected children may reach the tens of thousands, Human Rights Watch said in its report. China is home to as many as 100,000 North Koreans, the vast majority of them women. Just as the women need food and shelter, Chinese farmers are desperate for wives.
China’s traditional preference for sons and the migration of young women to the cities have left the countryside with a shortage of marriageable women.
Children of migrant workers living away from their legal residences also have difficulty attending school, but not to the degree of the children of North Korean women, who are in effect stateless, having no home village to fall back on and no legal status in either country.