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North Korea: Market forces have
female faces
By Andrei Lankov
SEOUL - A defector from the
North, a typical tough Korean auntie with
trademark permed hair, smiled when asked about
"men's 
role" in
North Korean families: "Well, in 1997-98 men
became useless. They went to their jobs, but there
was nothing to be done there, so they came back.
Meanwhile their wives went to distant places to
trade and kept families going."
Indeed,
the sudden increase in the economic strength and
status of women is one of manifold changes that
have taken place North Korea over the past 10 or
15 years. The old Stalinist society is dead. It
has died a slow but natural death over the past
decade and, in spite of Pyongyang's frequent and
loud protestation to the contrary, capitalism has
been reborn in North Korea. The old socialist
state-managed economy of steel mills and coal
mines hardly functions at all, and the ongoing
economic activity is largely private in nature.
But the new North Korean capitalism of
dirty marketplaces, charcoal trucks and badly
dressed vendors with huge sacks of merchandise on
their backs demonstrates one surprising feature:
it has a distinctly female face. Women are
over-represented among the leaders of the growing
post-Stalinist economy - a least on the lower
level, among the market traders and small-time
entrepreneurs.
This partially reflects a
growth pattern of North Korean neo-capitalism.
Unlike the restoration of capitalism in the former
Soviet Union or China, the "post-socialist
capitalism" of North Korea is not an affair
planned and encouraged by people from the top
tiers of the late communist hierarchy. Rather, it
is capitalism from below, which grows in spite of
government's attempts to reverse the process and
turn the clock back.
Until around 1990,
the markets and private trade of all kinds played
a very moderate role in North Korean society. Most
people were content with what they were officially
allocated through the elaborate public
distribution system, and did not want to look for
more opportunities. The government also did its
best to suppress the capitalist spirit. The
rations were not too generous, but still
sufficient for survival.
And then things
began to fall apart. The collapse of the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics brought a sudden end to
the flow of the Soviet aid (which was,
incidentally, happily accepted but never publicly
admitted by the North Korean side). This triggered
an implosion of the North Korean economy. In the
early 1990s people discovered that the rations
were not enough for survival, and thus something
had to be done. In a matter of years acute
shortages of food developed into a large-scale
famine, and in 1994-96 the public distribution
system ceased to function in most parts of the
country.
But men still felt bound to their
jobs by their obligations and rations (distributed
through workplaces). Actually, rations were not
forthcoming, but this did not matter. Being used
to the stability of the previous decades, the
North Koreans saw the situation as merely a
temporary crisis that soon would be overcome
somehow. No doubt, they reasoned, one day
everything will go back to the "normal" (that is,
Stalinist) state of affairs. So men believed that
it would be wise to keep their jobs in order to
resume their careers after eventual normalization
of the situation. The ubiquitous "organizational
life" also played its role: a North Korean adult
is required to attend endless indoctrination
sessions and meetings, and these requirements are
more demanding for males than for females.
Women enjoyed more freedom. By the
standard of the communist countries, North Korea
has always had an unusually high percentage of
housewives among its married women (for example,
in the northern border city of Sinuiju, up to 70%
of married women were estimated to be housewives
in the 1980s). While in most other communist
countries women were encouraged to continue work
after marriage, in North Korea the government did
not really mind when married women quit their jobs
to become full-time housewives.
Thus when
the economic crisis began, women were first to
take up market activities of all kinds. This came
very naturally. In some cases they began by
selling those household items they could do
without, or by selling homemade food. Eventually,
this developed into larger businesses. While men
continued to go to their plants (which by the
mid-1990s had usually ceased to operate) women
plunged into market activity. In North Korea such
trade involved long journeys in open trucks, and
nights spent on concrete floors or under the open
skies; they often bribed predatory local
officials. And, of course, women had the ability
to move heavy material, since the vendor's back
tends to be her major method of transportation.
This tendency was especially pronounced
among low- and middle- income families. The elite
received rations even through the famine years of
1996-99, so the women of North Korea's top 5%
usually continued with their old lifestyle.
Nonetheless, some of them began to use their
ability to get goods cheaply. Quite often, the
wives of high-level cadres were and still are
involved in resale of merchandise that is first
purchased from their husbands' factories at cheap
official prices. It is remarkable that in the case
of North Korea such activities are carried out not
so much by the cadres themselves, but by their
wives. Cadres had to be careful, since it was not
clear what was the official approach to the new
situation of nascent capitalism. Thus it was
assumed that women would be safer in such
undertakings since they did not, and still do not,
quite belong to the official social hierarchy.
But for the cadres' wives, these market
operations were a way to move from being affluent
to being rich. The lesser folks had to do
something just to stay alive.
Perhaps, had
the state given its formal approval to nascent
capitalism (as did the still formally "communist"
state of China), the men would be far more active.
But Pyongyang officialdom still seems to be
uncertain what to do with the crumbling system,
and it is afraid to give to unconditional approval
to capitalism. Thus men are left behind and
capitalism is left to women.
This led to a
change in the gender roles inside families. On
paper, communism appeared very feminist, but real
life in the communist states was an altogether
different matter, and among the communist
countries North Korea was remarkable for the
strength of its patriarchal stereotypes. Men,
especially in the more conservative northeastern
part of the country, seldom did anything at home,
with all household chores being exclusively the
female domain. But in the new situation, when men
did not have much to do while their wives
struggled to keep the family fed and clothed, many
men changed their attitude that housework was
something beneath their dignity (at least this is
what recent research among the defectors seem to
suggest). As one female defector put it, "When men
went to outside jobs and earned something, they
used to be very boastful. But now they cannot do
it and they become sort of useless, like a
streetlight in the middle of the day. So a man now
tries to help his wife in her work as best as he
can" to keep the family going.
Recently,
when it is increasingly clear that the "old times"
are not going to return, some men are bold enough
to risk breaking their ties with official
employment. But they often go to market not as
businessmen in their own right but rather as aides
to their wives who have amassed great experience
over the past decade. Being newcomers, males are
relegated to subordinate positions - at least
temporarily. Or alternatively, they are involved
in more dangerous and stressful kinds of activity,
such as smuggling goods across the badly protected
border with China. As one woman defector said:
"Men usually do smuggling. Men are better in big
things, you know".
Economic difficulties
and change in money-earning patterns as well as
new lifestyle and related opportunities in some
cases led to family breakdowns. In South Korea the
economic crisis of 1998 resulted in a mushrooming
divorce rate. In the North, the nearly
simultaneous Great Famine had the same impact,
even if in many cases the divorce was not
officially recognized.
Of course, we are
talking about a great disaster here, and a large
part of the estimated 600,000-900,000 people who
perished in those years were women. Of the
survivors, not all women became winners, bold
entrepreneurs or successful managers: some were
dragged into prostitution, which has made a
powerful comeback recently, and many more had to
survive on whatever meager food was available. But
still, it seems that years of crisis changed the
social roles in North Korean families. For many
women, the social disaster became the time when
they showed their strength, will and intelligence
not just to survive, but also to succeed.
Dr Andrei Lankov is a lecturer
in the faculty of Asian Studies, China and Korea
Center, Australian National University. He
graduated from Leningrad State University with a
PhD in Far Eastern history and China, with
emphasis on Korea, and his thesis focused on
factionalism in the Yi Dynasty. He has published
books and articles on Korea and North Asia. He is
currently on leave, teaching at the Kookmin
University, Seoul.
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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