[imText1]Dandong, China –In Suncheon City in South Pyongan Province, women can ride bicycles from now on.
If I tell you this, you might ask, “Then could North Korean women not ride bicycles before?” Yes, that was true to a certain extent.
Depending on the regional situation, the strength of the regulation varies so it is difficult to generalize, but women on bicycles are detected by the People’s Safety Agency or the community watch guard, they receive a punishment, such as paying up to 20,000~30,000 won to the police station in return for their bikes.
Bicycles are considered as the Number 1 asset in a North Korean household. Especially to women working in the jangmadang who do not have other means of transportation, bicycles are essentially the lifeline of the family. In situations where people are forced to eat corn soup from not having even a kilogram of rice, the continued regulation of bicycles can only lead to “thoughts of death.”
Tragically, one woman did take her own life due to this reason. In Suncheon in South Pyongan Province, not only party members but administrative organization leaders were mostly replaced after the “Dolduryeong (‘stone boss,’ a term used to disparagingly refer to leaders with real power in the North) incident” last year, when a person named Park Gi Dok was publicly executed for selling factory technology and equipment to China after conspiring with the Secretary in charge of the enterprise and the Party in Suncheon.
After the Director of the People’s Safety Agency was also transferred, the former Director of the Safety Agency in Bukchang was newly appointed as the Suncheon Safety Agency’s Director. However, he hurriedly mobilized a community watch guard in order to instill law and order in the region starting early March, instigating inspections of all kinds of cases.
Women on bicycles were also included in these inspections. When the decree fell, the watch guard got started on regulating them. Inspections of bicycle-riding also carries hefty penalties, so a significant amount of pocket money can be made.
Around mid-March, there was a woman in her 30s who was returning home on a bicycle to Chunsung District, Woonsan County after buying 5kg of corn from a jangmadang in Suncheon City. The woman was a teacher, whose husband was a disabled veteran paralyzed on one side.
Due to rumors of cheap corn prices, she had gone all the way to Suncheon City to buy corn. However, while crossing the Daedong River Bridge in Ryunpo-dong on her way back, she was stopped by the community watch guard.
When caught for inspection, she pleaded, “I did not know the rules and regulations in Suncheon City very well. Please let me go.” However, the guard did not heed her request.
The woman pleaded with them for over an hour, but after they refused to budge, she apparently told them, “If you do not return my bike, I will throw myself into the Daedong River.” When the incredulous guards confiscated the bike, the woman threw herself into the river on the spot.
When this incident became known, the civilians of Suncheon City and Woonsan County are supposed to have broken out into an outrage. In Woonsan in particular where the woman had lived, accusations against the guard in Suncheon started circulating and all of the windows in the home of branch office chief in charge of the bridge, where the woman had thrown herself, were shattered.
With enraged civilian sentiment, the Party executed the following decree in just two months, “Expel the community watch guard in charge to the provinces and allow the women in the vicinity of Suncheon to ride bicycles.”
Only when a poor female teacher was driven to death could the women in this region gain the freedom to ride bicycles.
Just a bridge away from Shinuiju, North Korea is Dandong City, China. Here, women and men can ride bicycles regularly without discrimination. Even in the case of rain, people ride bicycles by holding umbrellas or wearing raincoats.
In Dandong, women wearing miniskirts and riding bicycles is a frequent sight. How will they respond when they are told that a North Korean woman committed suicide because of the lack of freedom of people in the country to ride bicycles?
