Navigating Digital Activism and Faith-Based Support: Social Media and the Assistance of North Korean Trafficked Women

Abstract

This article examines the ethical ambivalence of digital activism in faith-based advocacy for trafficked North Korean women. While social media has become a powerful tool for raising awareness, mobilizing transnational solidarity, and bearing witness to injustice, its reliance on visibility also generates significant ethical risks for populations marked by extreme vulnerability. North Korean women who have experienced trafficking occupy precarious positions shaped by undocumented status, gender-based violence, and ongoing threats of surveillance and retaliation. In such contexts, public exposure may intensify harm rather than foster protection or agency. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship on digital activism, trauma, and platform governance, the article argues that digital advocacy does not operate in a neutral space but is structured by algorithmic logics that privilege emotional resonance, immediacy, and circulation. These dynamics often exceed the control of those whose lives are represented, producing asymmetries of power between advocates and survivors. The article situates these concerns within Christian ethical frameworks that emphasize relational dignity, asymmetrical responsibility, and restraint toward those who bear the greatest risk. Rather than treating increased visibility as inherently emancipatory, the analysis foregrounds the moral limits of exposure and highlights the ethical significance of silence, anonymity, and limited visibility in trauma-sensitive contexts. Faith-based humanitarianism is proposed as a normative framework capable of reframing digital activism as a practice of accompaniment rather than amplification. By integrating theological commitments to human dignity with attention to digital platform affordances, the article offers criteria for responsible digital witness that prioritize protection, relational consent, and long-term accountability over immediate impact. This study contributes to ongoing debates on digital activism by demonstrating that ethical advocacy must be context-dependent and attentive to vulnerability, particularly when faith-based actors engage in digital representations of suffering.