North Korean Gender Roles and Changes in Women : Under the Military‐First Politics and the Economic crisis

Abstract

This paper aims to examine North Korean gender roles and changes in women in the process of the social transition under the military-first politics and the economic crisis after the mid 1990s―focusing on gender roles by the military regime and the women's behaviours/minds as well as their economic activities as the major source of the peoples' survival basing on family and changes of the society from below. The main contents of each chapter are as follows: prior studies and survey method as a qualitative study, gender roles in the military-first era, warriors for survival doing family's support and societies' maintaining, strong viability and effect of private property, changing of the traditional gender role and consciousness, and then market economy and woman in conclusion. According to this study, women awareness of gender roles and the hierarchical order, constituted by the political authority, have begun to be reconstituted by the economic activity and change of their mind/behaviour. The change in women's ideas and behaviours often cause a crack in the hierarchical order between men and women in North Korea. Meanwhile, they are rapidly merchandising. In particular, the sex business/human trafficking of women have been on the increase. Therefore, North Korean militarist system and market economy from below provides women with both the light and the darkness in the process of the social transition under the military-first politics and the economic crisis after the mid 1990s. With strong women's social value and voice than before, on the one hand, the most serious health consequences for women that the hunger and malnutrition stemming from the food crisis and the abundant responsibility/ labour have brought on develop during pregnancies,child-deliveries, child rearing, and when in a state of deteriorating health. On the other, We have to be worthy of notice is that the rise of the individual in the change has resulted in a paradoxical transition of private life that is characterized by a surge of egoism and the rise of the uncivil individual, who emphasizes the right to pursue personal interests yet ignores her moral obligations to the public and other individuals. These results will, also, be important to study and policy on female defectors about 80% among North Korean defectors in South Korea.