While it is fairly common for unmarried North Korean women to have children, single mothers receive no support from the government and are even shunned by society, Daily NK has learned.
“Nowadays, you can sometimes see young women having children without getting married. Women used to avoid premarital sex as a legacy of Confucian gender segregation, but young women today don’t value sexual purity like their parents’ generation did,” a source in Chagang Province told Daily NK on Apr. 26, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The occasional birth of children out of wedlock appears to be the result of a more liberal attitude toward sexual relations that has recently spread among young people in North Korea. But a stigma against single mothers is still prevalent in the country, and single mothers are looked down upon in North Korean society. Given this attitude, the authorities do not even keep accurate statistics on the number of single mothers.
“The government has never asked for statistics on [single mothers] or held public meetings about it because it wants to hide the phenomenon, considering it a national shame and a social scandal. But if I had to guess, I’d say four out of a hundred women have children out of wedlock,” the source said.
“The government just sees [the single mother issue] as non-socialist behavior between young men and women that needs to be cracked down on and doesn’t give them any legal protection,” she added.
Discrimination toward single mothers is widespread
The general public views single mothers in much the same way as the authorities. In fact, the source said, contempt, discrimination, and hatred of single mothers are deeply ingrained in North Korean society.
“If a rumor gets out that a woman has had a child out of wedlock, she’ll be labeled a wanton woman for the rest of her life. For men, promiscuity is generally seen as a phase they go through, but women who get pregnant are considered stupid and slutty – they are simply seen as worthless specimens of humanity,” the source said.
Last July, a twentysomething woman in Kimhyongjik County who had an illegitimate child visited the family of the man she had been dating, only to be summarily turned away. “This is what happens when a woman can’t keep her legs closed. Why should we take care of you when you never had a wedding?” one family member told her.
Given society’s general attitude to the issue, a significant number of women who become pregnant out of wedlock have abortions, and even those who have the baby often abandon it or give it up for adoption. Such practices often result in grave violations of the children’s right to life.
“When unmarried women find out they’re pregnant, they can usually terminate the pregnancy medically or by dilation and curettage up to three months, or by more complicated surgery after four months. Women who can’t do that often abandon their child after birth or give it away to strangers,” the source said.
In North Korea, children cannot be legally adopted if either parent is alive, so official adoption is not an option for single mothers, she explained.
“When a teenager in Chunggang County, Chagang Province, had a baby earlier this month, her parents disregarded her wish to raise the child on her own and instead had the baby sent far to the south with the help of some powerful family relatives,” the source added.
Translated by David Carruth. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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