Kang was 20 when she left her official job as a potato researcher in North Korea. Her aspiration was to join the women who had taken up activities in the illicit markets, first to survive the “Hard March” (as the famine years of the mid-1990s became known) and then to build a better life for themselves. them and their families outside the strict Government controls.
Kang began trading goods such as rice, metals and oil, generating much more income than he could have expected from a state-sanctioned job. Eventually, before reaching South Korea In 2013, her most lucrative business was a service as a matchmaker for young women who wanted to work in factories in China.
Kang was one of the women who participated in the research of our new book, Grassroots Capitalism Led by North Korean women. As she told us: “The most rewarding thing about the job was the money. I was able to pay my younger sister's college tuition, as well as my stepchildren's. I could even buy my husband membership in the Workers' Party, and eventually make him secretary of the party. I felt myself maturing through business. It was as if we were party officials who supported their children. I could do all that possible with the money I earned.”
The emergence of grassroots capitalism in North Korea, through women like Kang, is a wake-up call to patriarchal societies around the world: underestimate women at your peril.
Ironically, in our research we found that by attempting to exclude women from the public sphere and the formal economy, the North Korean government has actually encouraged them to become entrepreneurs, with cascading effects for society.
How did this phenomenon happen? North Korean authorities continue to oppress the population with a culture of terror and surveillance aimed at containing the expansion of capitalism. But their main target has been men, not women.
Underappreciated and operating in the shadows, North Korean women have become increasingly adept at circumventing official surveillance and controls to create the space needed to push for a significant economic and social change.
Our book explores the complex ways in which North Korean women have exercised agency through everyday life.
Our research was based on 52 interviews with North Korean female defectors, non-governmental organizations, and several field trips to North Korea and northeastern China. Far from stereotypes of brainwashed automatons or helpless victims in need of protection, we discovered that North Korean women are strong, resilient and creative.
Through acts of covert resistance, they have promoted change in family relationships, female sexuality, reproductive problems and the cultural identity of women.
Impulse of capitalism
Women have become active protagonists of the emerging informal economy centered on local markets, which before covid represented approximately 80% of family income and more than 60% of the population's food and basic needs.
In short, North Koreans depend on women's work, both at home and in the market, to survive.
In most North Korean families, women have become the main breadwinners. This has created more opportunities for women and challenges for those who seek to control them, including the State.
New gender roles
Women have driven changes that are destabilizing two fundamental pillars of North Korea: socialism and entrenched patriarchy.
Women's participation in market activities has given them access to limited resources, including money, and a level of public visibility and social interaction earlier. reserved for men.
Economic independence and greater participation in household decision-making have tested entrenched family dynamics and challenged broader social norms. As Seol explains: “As rations decreased, women took more initiative and went out to work outside the home. It was the men who stayed at home: we began to expect men to cook and take care of housework. I think that women and men reversed roles.”
A sexual revolution
The way women experience and approach sexuality, relationships, and marriage has become much more complex. This includes delayed marriage and increased divorces. Nontraditional relationships are also flourishing, such as premarital and extramarital couples (which have given rise to a growing number of single mothers) and couples of older women with younger men.
A young woman named Bae explained it to us: “Because I make a lot of money, I have high standards for marriage. Being busy earning money, I don’t have time to think about marriage or getting married.”
At the same time, young city-dwellers affiliated with the Party are adopting more liberal attitudes toward dating and sex, and a more romantic view of relationships. As Joo stated: “Many young people are dating in public right now. After watching South Korean dramas, young women call their boyfriend “oppa” ('brother') like South Koreans. “Young couples go around hugging.”
Some women have also been forming strategic relationships with Chinese men as a means of settling in China, thereby ensuring their safety.
Question of heels
Although they appear to conform to patriarchal versions of femininity, North Korean women are actually constructing a new version of the hyperfeminine woman ideal for traditional North Korean culture. This is generally a means to access material goods and social rewards.
Through fashion and conspicuous consumption, these women play a key role in determining social status in North Korea. For example, high heels are de rigueur. “Women are obsessed with high heels. Probably because girls are short. Whether women live in the countryside or in the mountains, we prefer this type of shoes, even to wear them on unpaved roads,” Bae explained.
Like their South Korean peers, the younger generation has become more interested in slender bodies and long, straight hair. More and more women are not only having surgery on their double eyelids, but also on their dimples or nose. Another woman, Gho, related: “Young people are like South Koreans. We secretly watch South Korean soap operas and wear pants like South Koreans (laughs), and we dye our hair yellow like South Koreans.”
With these actions, women are challenging the narrow domestic ideals of wives and mothers and create new sets of social expectations and constructions of femininity.
The way Paik describes her decision to dye her hair and wear earrings is an example of how women are also emulating Ri Sol-ju, the fashion-mad first lady: “Officials used to question everyone who wore earrings.” . But then Ri Sol-ju showed up wearing earrings and now the authorities can't do much about it. The people began to rebel. In North Korea it is not allowed to dye your hair, and today “A lot of people dye their hair.”
The new ideal woman
The State has responded to this social change by modifying the way it presents the “ideal” woman in its propaganda.
For example, it now promotes women who embody an attractive and dynamic mix of old and new, loyalty and modernity, including the leader's sister, wife and now daughter. For example, Ri regularly appears dressed in Prada, Christian Dior and Chanel, or in styles inspired by these designers.
With these types of strategies, the regime tries to co-opt social trends to maintain its legitimacy.
BROWN DALTON
KYUNGJA JUNG (**) AND LESLEY PARKER (***)
THE CONVERSATION
Head of Department of Management, UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney.
(**) Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney.
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