Shuang Lin in China asks:



Generally, do you feel that there is gender equality in North Korea society? Do women face serious discrimination?

North Korea is highly patriarchal. For example, women are advised not to visit to other houses on 1 January as it is considered bad luck. It is also bad luck for a shop if the first customer of the day is female. In the past, women faced criticism if their husbands were seen in the kitchen, though things might have gotten slightly better these days.

North Korean men are expected to go to work early every morning, even if they don’t get paid. It is thought to be appropriate and ideal that men obey this policy of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), even if the family has nothing to eat.

Therefore women, and not men, are expected to take care of everything that happens within the house. No matter how hard it is to make a living, the only duty men are expected to perform at home is to ban family members from doing anything against the policies of the WPK.

If a husband or wife does anything contrary to party ideology, this is considered grounds for divorce

In other words, it is thought that the role of men is to teach their wives and children so that they will not do anything that interferes with party ideology, even if they’re on the verge of starving to death. This is often reflected in divorce cases. If a husband or wife does anything contrary to party ideology, even to make a living, this is considered grounds for divorce.

Also, a WPK membership card is something you don’t show, even to your spouse, because party ideology is considered far more important than the affection between husband and wife. Men are expected to be able to maintain a distinction between their public and personal lives. Women shouldn’t want to know about the things happening to their men out of house.

And if husbands are violent towards their wives the government doesn’t interfere, leaving women to bear the consequences alone. In my hometown, I’d say domestic violence occurred on a daily basis in three out of 10 households, and less often in others.

North Korean women often have to work to feed their families. Photograph: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

‘Hard-working heroines’

North Korea was officially pushing for and encouraging gender equality before South Korea, but this wasn’t for the good of women. When China and North Korea officially campaigned for gender equality, it wasn’t done to free women from the patriarchy: the motive was to encourage women to go to work to re-build the economy after the Korean War.

Actually, women played a large role in this rebuilding. The government bestowed awards for working women who achieved great things, labeling them “hard-working heroines” to encourage more women to work harder.

But when things got better in the 1950s and 60s, when the North Korean economy was outperforming that of South Korea, they didn’t need the women’s labour force anymore, so they stopped encouraging women in the workplace.

Gender equality and women’s role in society were considered important when women were needed but not when the need passed. In North Korean society, when women do a good job at cooking, cleaning and other housework or when they bring home money from selling goods at the market they are highly praised.

But when a woman breaks the glass ceiling to get a highly respected job or becomes a high-ranking party member, people quote the old Korean saying: “It goes ill with the house when the hen sings and the cock is silent.”

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Translation by Elizabeth Jae