But if the public distribution system reinforced North Korean women’s dependence on their spouses, the country’s economic collapse in the 1990s afforded them an opportunity to forge a different role.
Many women engaged in trade simply to help their families survive, but others formed the backbone of a new entrepreneurial class. In some cases, this caused tensions with male spouses as women became the main breadwinners.“The system changed to one in which women feed the family and men go and sit all day at their workplace,” says Hyun Hyang , who before she escaped the country used to smuggle South Korean cosmetics from China and sell them out of her house in the northern city of Hyesan.
By 2020, there were at least 436 official markets in North Korea, each with up to 20,000 stalls operated exclusively by women and raising approximately $56.8 million per year in revenue for the government, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. All North Koreans are expected to deliver their individual quotas to local authorities, which in turn are expected to meet the demands of ministries in Pyongyang. Even children are expected to participate in the construction and refurbishment of their own schools in order to be permitted to attend lessons, according to escapee testimonies.
As they are more likely than men to engage in mobile illegal or semi-legal economic activity, North Korean women are also more likely to find themselves at the mercy of officialdom in a country where sexual exploitation is rife, say escapees. In a letter read out to the Seventh Congress of the Women’s Union in June 2021, the young dictator exhorted North Korean women to wear traditional clothing, write encouraging letters to male soldiers, and protect children from “alien ideology, culture and lifestyles”.