71 V. The human rights situation of North Korean refugee women in China and other third countries – Women moving across state borders 1. The North Korean- Chinese border and North Korean refugee women North Koreans and specifically women started to escape to China from the mid-1990s onwards when North Korea was severely struck by famines. Cross-border movements of North Korean residents which previously had raised little attention emerged as a national problem only when their numbers increased drastically in the aftermath of the famines. North Korean residents crossed the Tumen River and Abrok River, which follow the border line between North Korea and China, and now reside in Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning, three north-eastern provinces of China. The reason for North Korean women’s concentration in these three north-eastern provinces lies in the fact that the latter are adjacent to the border with North Korea. Both the Abrok River and Tumen River which form the North Korean-Chinese border become narrower and have many shallow areas the more you go upstream, and since these river areas freeze over in winter North Koreans could easily move back and forth between China and North Korea. Apart from this geographical advantage, these three north-eastern border regions have a population of around 1.8 million ‘Chosun-jok’33; around 97% of ethnic Koreans in China live in this area. The ‘Chosun-jok’ received economic support from their friends in North Korea during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and some of them migrated to North Korea. This historical background attracted North Korean residents 33 The Korean term ‘Chosun-jok’ refers to Korean people who live in China and hold the Chinese citizenship. China officially recognizes 56 ethnic groups among which ethnic Koreans are categorized as ‘Chosun-jok’. While this group partly consists of Koreans who left the Korean peninsula and migrated to Manchuria due to the difficult living conditions during the period of Japanese colonialism, the majority of the ‘Chosun-jok’ settled in Manchuria in line with Japanese imperialist resettlement policies vis-à-vis the colonized aiming at establishing Manchukuo, a puppet state of Imperial Japan.