Members of the Socialist Women’s Union of Korea are quite unhappy after North Korean authorities recently gave them silk cocoon production quotas.
North Korea was already mobilizing members of the organization, which is made up of full-time housewives, for work in agricultural villages and construction sites.
A source in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Thursday that with North Korea beginning silk cocoon production from early August, the authorities have tasked each union member with contributing one kilogram of cocoons at the end of September. “Pressed by this task, union members are urgently producing cocoons,” he said.
According to the source, union members have long had to contribute the cocoons they produce to the organization every September. But this year they face greater difficulties because of COVID-19 and mandated work in agricultural villages.
In fact, union members in the city of Hoeryong and Saebyol and Onson counties, in North Hamgyong Province, have been individually contracted to produce silk cocoons. What is worse, in addition to raising silkworms, they are reportedly being enlisted for all sorts of social projects, even as they face economic difficulties due to COVID-19.
“In accordance with [the government’s] demand to secure or create mulberry fields each year on its own, the union hands out silkworm eggs to each member and has them produce silk cocoons,” said the source. “However, women already tasked with providing food for their families find life difficult having to plant and take care of mulberry trees. So securing and creating mulberry fields is a difficult task.”
As cocoon production is a state task union members dare not refuse, some women who are unable to look after silkworms themselves are reportedly paying others to raise the silkworms for them.
The source said union members who do business or who are well off find the national task bothersome, so they have entrusted their cocoon boxes to members who are struggling, paying them for their labor.
Forced to work in agricultural villages and on downtown construction sites, and now tasked with cocoon production, union members are tired. And they are reportedly making their unhappiness plain.
According to the source, union members talk of their misfortune, complaining that “nobody can get any sleep when, at this busy time, they have to raise silkworms that require a lot of care and can die if it’s too hot or humid” and “woman are destined to suffer until they die in this country.”
The source further said union members are wandering around at night in search of food for their worms, “even intruding into the mulberry fields of farms to steal.”
