2 improvement of the human rights situation of refugee women are currently being put forward.1 While the existing studies and research have borne and continue to bear considerable fruits with regard to the collection and systematization of cases of human rights violations against North Korean refugee women and the proposal of related policies, there are, nevertheless, two major reasons and aims that inspired this research and our wish to inquire afresh into violations of refugee women’s human rights. Firstly, by studying and categorizing the situation of human rights violations against North Korean refugee women according to their spatial context, this research tried to gain a three-dimensional perspective: Human rights violations that North Korean refugee women encounter in North Korea, in China and third countries as well as in South Korea not only differ depending on the specificities of the above places, but past experiences of human rights violations, once inscribed in the bodies and minds of the victims, made these refugee women even more vulnerable to new infringements of their human rights. Attentiveness to the space(s) of human rights violations allowed us to develop a more systematic understanding of the social structure of human rights violations and of the psychological injuries suffered by the victims. Thus, this study has – although the realities of human rights violations that North Korean women face during their flight and their resettlement in South Korea are the primary object of study – also analyzed the human rights situation that women are confronted with in North Korea in order to understand the continual process of human rights violations (cf. Chapter IV). Furthermore, by grasping the human rights situation of North Korean refugee women from the perspective of their oral life histories, this research endeavoured to comprehend the evaluations that North Korean refugee women themselves make about their lives and to suggest, through these, more systematic and realistic ways to improve their human rights situation. The majority of existing studies inquire into and classify cases of human rights violations faced by North Korean refugee women on the 1 For an introduction and review of existing research and fact-finding studies cf. Chapter II.