Gender Politics in Early Cold War North Korea: National Division, Conscription, and Militarized Motherhood from the Late 1940s to 1960s

Abstract

This study delves into how North Korea designed gender relations from the late 1940s to 1960s, particularly focusing on the Cold War context which predominantly played in its state-building processes. Gender agenda in the 1940s was often used as a means to prove the North’s superiority to the Southern counterpart under the Cold War rivalry and national division. While the establishment of conscription during the Korean War institutionally enabled masculine dominance, the pursuit of Cold War modernity remolded North Korean men and women as collective militarized subjects in the postwar era. North Korea moreover indoctrinated militarized motherhood as an ideal femininity in the 1960s, asking women to bear and rear “manly” sons who are willing to volunteer for troops.