North Korean authorities are demanding that young people, particularly young women, abandon their “prejudices” against rural villages, coercing them into making “petitions” to move to the countryside.
According to a Daily NK source in South Hamgyong Province, the authorities conducted a lecture at factories and enterprises in Hamhung on Feb. 5.
The lecture was titled, “Young People, Let’s Be Pioneers of the Rural Revolution.”
The lecture apparently emphasized that young women in their 20s must abandon their “outdated understanding” of rural areas.
North Korea’s urban-rural gap is, in fact, quite deep. The country has been trumpeting the “revolutionization of agricultural villages” to narrow this gap since the era of Kim Il Sung; however, little progress to narrow the gap has been made.
Accordingly, of the four songbun, or social statuses — be it soldier, office worker, laborer, or farmer — that North Korean citizens attain when they become active members of society, “farmer” is the one people most avoid. In a country that places great importance on “background” and “identity,” more and more people are avoiding becoming poor farmers.
According to the source, women are responding to the situation by fiercely refusing appeals to go to the countryside, with some going as far as to say they would “rather die than marry a farmer.”
For example, it has become trendy for women to break off engagements if their fiancés are transferred to agricultural villages, or submit a petition to move to one.
A similar trend can be seen even among North Korea’s ruling class. Many women have chosen to remain in Pyongyang alone rather than follow their provincially born husbands home after they have been discharged from the army.
North Korean authorities seem aware of the situation, too. That the recent lecture in Hamhung focused on “women” is also noteworthy, with some North Koreans wondering if the authorities have altered their previous strategy of encouraging mostly men to submit petitions to move to the countryside. That is to say, they are trying to correct the gender imbalance in who is making the petitions.
According to the source, the lecture announced women would have to submit petitions to move to rural communities after late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s birthday on Feb. 16. Ultimately, he claimed, women from poor, powerless backgrounds are set to be dragged off to rural villages.
During the Fourth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee late last year, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the ruling party’s policy of “building rural villages” was to turn all agricultural towns across the country into “ideal socialist villages” that are as wealthy and cultured as Samjiyon, a city North Korea claims is the “model” of rural development.
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