[imText1]“North Korean women who have experienced the “March of Tribulation (mass starvation period in the 1990s)” where more than 2mn people died of starvation have now surpassed times of hardship and frugality, strengthening a zealous heart to live. This is how North Korean women becoming soldiers of war to life has formed.
Professor Park Young Ja of Sookmyung Women’s University presented a paper to the “International Journal of Korean Unification Studies (vol. 15, no. 2)” issued by the Korean Institute of National Unification titled “Militaristic era, a study on North Korean women’s sexuality” arguing that the Kim Jong Il government has enforced and created the identity of North Korean women in a militaristic generation.
She argued that the characteristics shaping North Korean women living in a militaristic era are “caring for others ethics” and “shrewdness.” She analyzed that as the nation and men could not take responsibility for the living, women accumulated marketability and strengthened their lives as they were “forced to battle life.”
Professor Park said “Though rare to see in the 21st century, today North Korea still maintains a personified autocratic system” and explained the reason to be “the dynastical ‘benevolent politics’ created by logics and myths of compensatory ‘gratifying ethics.’ Also, the act of raising and serving this benevolence called ‘serving morality.’”
She analyzed “Following Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994, the Kim Jong Il government implemented the teachings of Father Kim Il Sung’s government accentuating propaganda on the grace for women’s liberation and requital ethics of women.”
Further, she asserted “Since the times of Japanese resistance and armaments conflict, (North Korean) women were taught that true ethics for a woman was gracefully giving back to women’s liberation and autonomy by living ‘faithfully to the Father’ and that this was the ‘best way to express revolutionary principles of righteousness.”
Professor Park said “In the same way, Kim Jong Il sincerely tries to inherit Kim Il Sung’s authority into his own life” and revealed “The government which has embraced Kim Jong Il’s authoritative power has transferred all its disposition of gratitude and service onto its guards and societal defense mechanisms, and have internalized this information in the minds of North Korean women.”
She revealed “Though the North Korean government has continued to experience financial difficulties for 10 years, it is still devoting itself to military and national defense in order to maintain its own existence. By utilizing a woman’s sexuality as ‘care and devotion’ the responsibility of looking after the lives of family members has been placed on women.”
Further “Relief groups supporting the military in charge of society and the nation which cannot take care of street kids, the disabled, elderly and orphans in which the military first politics are neglecting are being taken care of” by women, she added.
In addition, she said “Amidst times where the leader is being inaugurated by descent, the North Korean system established by a fraudulent society focused on autocracy, has also deceived the role of gender through production and family” and analyzed “Hence, it is inevitable that the North Korea women’s political position in society is comparatively lower than men.”
