Given the significance of marriage and family in North Korean society, it is easy to see why sexuality is so austere — at least in official discourse. Not only are other concerns, such as national security and food insecurity, major preoccupations for a politically isolated country with an ailing economy, but the normative value placed on the nuclear family as the basic unit of society officially limits the expression of sexuality to the reproduction of future generations within the confines of heterosexual marriage. Reproduction for the purposes of population growth has been particularly important because North Korea’s population has stood at less than half of South Korea’s since 1945, an imbalance that was further exacerbated by the Korean War which killed 12 to 15 per cent of North Korea’s population (Halliday 1985: 47). Like other industrialised societies, however, there has been a steady decline in the fertility rate despite policies promoting population growth — the average number of children per woman decreased from 6.5 in 1966 to 2.5 in 1988 (Jung and Dalton 2006: 754).
The official promotion of reproduction notwithstanding, one must nevertheless assume that there is much that goes on behind closed doors, whether in non-reproductive sexual practices or in methods of birth control. Officially, family planning, including contraceptives and abortions, are available with a doctor’s prescription through the public health system, but the extent to which they are actually readily accessible remains unclear. According to one survey, more than 60 per cent of North Korean women used contraceptives, mainly the intrauterine device (CEDAW 2005b: 8). However, by North Korea’s own admission, abortion is restricted, only available in cases of medical complications (‘disease’ or ‘deformity’) or unwed ‘illegal’ pregnancies (CEDAW 2002: 27). There are reportedly no restrictions to women’s access to family planning services to decide on the number and spacing of children, but the language presumes the use of contraceptives within a family for the purposes offamily planning (CEDAW 2002: 28). Similarly, a form of sex education is provided in secondary schools as students are taught human anatomy, but the burden is on girls to attend additional lectures between the third and sixth grades on ‘female physiology’ and ‘common knowledge of female menstruation and nursing of children’ (CEDAW 2005a: 16). Family planning and reproductive health policies therefore target women in order to prevent ‘illegal abortion and premature pregnancy’, limiting sexual practices to the confines of marriage (CEDAW 2005a: 17).
Although little is known about North Korean sexual practices, some information can be gleaned from North Korean refugees and defectors with the caveat that they represent a selfselected group of those who chose to leave North Korea, overwhelmingly from the border regions of North Hamgybng Province. They are often paid for their interviews, which leads to incentives to embellish their stories. On the surface, the stories gathered in the twenty-first century are surprisingly similar to the statements offered in the 1970s, leading one journalist to conclude, for example, that ‘the country doesn’t have a dating culture. Many marriages are still arranged… Couples are not supposed to make any public displays of affection… [and] there is no premarital sex’ (Demick 2009: 80). The reportage, however, betrays hidden realities between the lines. For example, out of the six main personalities featured in Barbara Demick’s book on North Korea, three of them either have family members who divorced or had divorced themselves. One of the more rebellious sons had lived out of wedlock with an older woman (Demick 2009: 144) and the book itself revolves around the blossoming love affair between a young couple who manage to find time to date in the cover of night with the blackouts that became a regular feature of everyday life during the period of famine and economic collapse referred to as the ‘Arduous March’ (officially 1996—97, but in reality 1994—98). The famine and the subsequent disintegration of the family apparently weakened strict sexual norms, with increases in extramarital relations, unwed pregnancies, abortions, and divorces (Jung and Dalton 2006: 756).
Moreover, in a rare survey of North Korean refugees about their sex lives, husbands on average were shown to be satisfied with their sex lives, while wives generally answered that they had no thoughts on the matter or did not know (Pak 2003: 332). The only woman to express overt dissatisfaction was a woman in her mid-thirties with a college degree in a professional occupation. While most were embarrassed to speak about sex, the fact that an educated professional woman was the only one to speak up suggests the extent to which much of the data coming from refugee testimony is skewed. Predictably, the vast majority of refugees tend to come from the border regions, having lived their lives in the periphery as low-level workers. Their views and experiences are coloured by their lack ofaccess to the relatively more cosmopolitan surroundings of places like Pyongyang, whose residents might have seen love affairs displayed on the silver screen or read about them in translated works such as Gone with the Wind (Demick 2009: 190). While the vast majority of films and literature are didactic in nature, some incorporate popular genres of entertainment such as science fiction and romance, including films such as Pulgasari (Shin 1985) about a creature resembling Godzilla, and Love, Love, My Love (Shin 1984). Based on the popular folktale of a beautiful courtesan of the Chosbn Dynasty named Ch’unhyang, Love, Love, My Love featured heretofore unprecedented themes of romance and sexuality (Lee 2000: 89). Since 1987, the Pyongyang Film Festival has provided its residents with the opportunity to watch foreign films, and the state-run television stations also show films from the former Soviet bloc at least once a week (Schonherr 2011).
Without a focused study on North Korean sexual practices and experiences, however, it is difficult to make any conclusive assessments about sexuality in North Korea. What is clear is that sexuality is no more difficult to discipline than other facets of life. Young people are encouraged to marry later in life while public displays of affection are restrained. There are no acknowledgments of or provisions for homosexual relationships or transgendered identities. There seems to be very little awareness at all of any diversity in sexual orientation or identity as one North Korean refugee claimed that he did not understand why he felt no desire for his wife for the nine years he was married until, after settling in South Korea, he saw a photograph of two men kissing, which ‘sent thrills throughout [his] body’ when he finally recognised his homosexuality (Chu 2004). Despite the limited forms of sexuality, there is little evidence of the social issues that arise in other parts of the world such as escalating sexually transmissible diseases, teenage pregnancies, unwed mothers, or illegal abortions. No doubt such instances do exist (as intimated by more recent problems of prostitution and trafficking discussed below), but widespread occurrences would be difficult to hide, especially with the increases in the volume of visitors to the country in the form of aid workers and tourists. Rather than the ‘repression’ of sexuality, I have therefore inquired into the origins and mechanisms of the kind of puritan sexuality that has come to dominate North Korean society.
A lasting factor has been the history of colonisation. Postcolonial societies in both the North and South have been plagued by the legacies of Japanese imperialism which simultaneously combined discriminatory policies targeting colonised women to serve as sexual slaves (so-called ‘comfort women’) for the Japanese Imperial Army while propounding the equality of all imperial subjects through a form of pan-Asianism in the call for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The result in North Korea has been an obsession with purity and a homogeneous national identity to expel the traumatic memory of discrimination and sexualised violence. In so far as Japanese domination of Korea — whether in the loss of sovereignty or the systematic rape of ‘comfort women’ — was thought to be the direct result of the lack of a strong state that could protect its independence and its people’s physical integrity, the state is now presented as the protector and guardian of sexuality and national identity. As noted above, the Gender Equality Law voided all Japanese imperial laws and regulations pertaining to Korean gender relations, proceeding to define how marriage, family, and sexuality would be construed in a new Korea.
Many communist states have attempted to solve the ‘woman question’ by enabling women to work outside the home and be free from dependence on male breadwinners. Sex would no longer be a commodity to be sold by destitute women; nor would it be a form of servitude by women in wealthy families for the reproduction of heirs to pass on inheritance. Guaranteed a basic minimum standard of living, women (and men) would now be able to choose their partners according to their true sentiments rather than for survival. North Korea was no different, as women were encouraged to join the workforce. By 1965, approximately 55 per cent of the workforce was made up of women (Jung and Dalton 2006: 750). Social services and maternity benefits for women were accordingly expanded. Children were provided with eleven years of free mandatory education; there were free childcare centres for infants between 30 days and three years old, and kindergartens for children of ages four to five; and women were provided five months of paid maternity leave (Pak 2003: 151—52). Even among disaffected North Koreans who have chosen to leave the country, free education and medical care have been regarded favourably as the greatest achievements of state socialism in North Korea.
Still, the family was maintained as a social unit in which women were the main caregivers. Despite major strides enabling women to be economically independent and politically active, it remained largely women’s duty to take care of children and housework. North Korean women have the double burden of working outside the home while being in charge of domestic chores. Even with the socialisation of childcare, the sexual division of labour has been difficult to overturn because gender roles within the family were reproduced in public institutions. Public canteens, laundries, orphanages and childcare centres are run by women who are often referred to as ‘mothers’ (S. Kim 1947: 55).
Moreover, gender segregation in labour sidestepped the principle of equal pay for equal work, since women usually worked in occupations with lower pay: the service sector, light industries, primary school teaching, and nursing. Men dominated the higher-paid occupations in mining and heavy industries, taking the jobs with the highest status as managers, university professors, and doctors (Yun 1991: 203). In the 1970s, 70 per cent of women’s employment was concentrated in the light industries (Jung and Dalton 2006: 751), and women continue to make up 70 per cent of workers in the light industries, 86 per cent of school teachers, and 100 per cent of nurses (Park 2011: 163). North Korea claims to have put in place a quota of over 30 per cent for the proportion of women among public officials, but women only make up 10 per cent of judges, 10 per cent of top officials in government ministries, and 20 per cent of representatives to the people’s assemblies at all levels (CEDAW 2005a: 6, 9). Despite the claim to gender equality, North Korean discourse emphasises different ‘constitution and ability’ for different types ofjobs (CEDAW 2005a: 12) with some work that deals with ‘poisonous matters’ or ‘harmful rays’ or excessive heat, cold, humidity, noise, or vibration deemed ‘harmful’ for women (CEDAW 2002: 24).
However, in the aftermath of the crises of the 1990s which dismantled the public distribution of food and most social services, women became the main income earners through private trading activities that ranged from peddling food and household items to providing services such as hair-cutting and needlework (Park 2011: 165). As already noted, strict sexual norms weakened, but gender roles were also undermined as women earned income through black markets with their relatively greater free time since housewives were not always expected to work outside the home. Unlike other socialist countries, an unusually high percentage of married women have chosen to be housewives. In the mid-1980s, 60 to 70 per cent of married women began quitting their jobs after marriage, although they often continued to work in neighbourhood work units without remuneration (Jung and Dalton 2006: 752). In contrast to other mass organisations such as the Socialist Youth League, open to all youths between the ages of 15 and 26, or the Occupational League for all workers, the Women’s Union — predominantly made up of housewives — was reportedly less strict about holding its members accountable for regularly attending its meetings since the organisation was not tied to career advancement (Pak 2003: 280). As a result, housewives were able to take advantage of market activities, and some women began to question the sexual division of labour at home, demanding that their husbands share in domestic chores, while others opted out of marriage altogether (Park 2011: 171).
Subsequently, the revised 1998 Constitution deleted the clause that the state shall ‘liberate women from the heavy family chores’, which had been included in the 1972 Constitution (Park 2011: 167). The state’s withdrawal from its commitment to the protection of women’s rights comes at the worst time, as sexual trafficking has arguably become the single most pressing problem facing North Korean women in the border regions. As women look for opportunities to provide for their families, they are often kidnapped or lured, and sold as farm hands, restaurant workers, family servants, brides, or sex workers into China (Jung and Dalton 2006: 757). The women’s illegal status exposes them to sexual violence, rape, and confinement without any recourse (Good Friends 2005: 8).
Officially, North Korea disavows instances of trafficking in women or prostitution in the country, claiming that ‘there is no informal sector in the DPRK’ (CEDAW 2005a: 8, 12).
Independent research by humanitarian organisations, however, confirms the existence of prostitution within the country, which spiked drastically after the onset of food shortages beginning in the mid-1990s. Women sold sex as a form of bribe to security personnel or in exchange for food (Good Friends 2005: 7). While the state has more often been viewed as an obstacle to sexual freedom, especially in places like North Korea, state intervention may be the only remedy to address the rising problem of trafficking and sexual violence against women. It is a sobering reminder of the potentially protective role of the state, rather than simply its intrusiveness, in the realm of sexuality.