Love and Dating ... in North Korea
This updated version of Love & Sex in North Korea was originally written by LiNK for Koreaboo.
According to historians who are really good at remembering when things happened in the olden days, sex and love existed before the Internet was even invented. Before 56K dial-up, phones, and even Tinder, humans found ways to interact completely offline and engage in sexual activity. In fact, biologists believe that the human proclivity for sex is universal and plays a major role in producing baby humans, thereby maintaining the human race’s existence. (Go humans!)
So could it be that in North Korea too, people have sex and fall in love and do romantic things with each other?
According to North Korean refugees that I’ve worked with, the answer is: Yes. North Koreans have sex too.
So, how do North Koreans do it?
First of all, the baseline to understand is that overall North Korean dating culture is pretty traditional and conservative. Think South Korea, but 50 years ago. One of the reasons for this is, well, North Korean society is quite conservative and patriarchal in general and North Korean media is super old-fashioned. In North Korean films you don’t see couples kissing or being physically affectionate with each other, so many North Koreans are just not used to PDA and wouldn’t dream of being too affectionate or kissing in public.
Nonetheless North Koreans do meet and date and fall in love like everywhere else. A lot of it starts in school (awww) and people also meet at dances or house parties. That’s right, when the parents are out of town young urban North Koreans will often invite a bunch of friends over and have a party. Once ‘the eyes have met’ the boy often has to do a lot of the pursuing. And guys, spare a thought for our brothers there: Only about 10% of North Koreans have a mobile phone. So for most, it has to be done the old fashioned way.
Either you have to pre-arrange to meet ‘10 trees away from the school gate at 7pm on Wednesday’ or you have to take the risk of going to their house. The danger, of course, is that you knock on the door and their mother answers, causing all that (traditional Asian) embarrassment. So a common trick is to knock and wait for someone to call out “Who is it?” If it’s the mother you say “I’ve come for Eun-kyung” (even though your girlfriend’s name is something else) and pretend you got the wrong house. If your girlfriend answers, then you can say, “It’s me! Come out!” Nicely done.
Finding a place to date isn’t so hard; people hang out in the park, or by the river, or around the market. But it’s when you need a bit more privacy that things get more difficult. The vast majority of young North Koreans live in their parents house until they get married (even more so than South Koreans) so there is no privacy at home. So when the relationship heats up, young couples will often go to the North Korean equivalent of a love motel, which is basically paying a middle-aged women to clear out of their own house for a few hours so the couple can get it on. A more risky space for a frisson might be a storage room with an unlocked door, or even a train toilet.
However, there’s a problem here...well, a few in fact. Sex education is almost non-existent in North Korea. And contraceptive pills and condoms can be hard to come by, too (you can’t just stop by the closest 24-hour convenience store). I have a friend who used to smuggle goods from China to sell in North Korea, and she says she saw a pregnancy test for the first time in 2007. She of course promptly smuggled some in to sell to North Korean women. This combination of factors unfortunately leads to a lot of unplanned pregnancies and risky abortions amongst unmarried women.
Like other aspects of North Korean culture, dating culture is not static. And as with other social changes, one of the major drivers is the influx of foreign media being smuggled in on DVDs and USB drives, and now even Micro-SD cards. In fact, one of the reasons South Korean dramas and films are so popular is because, in contrast to North Korean government-produced films, they show compelling human stories of love and relationships, and have addictive plotlines. If all you had access to was government propaganda your whole life and then suddenly you heard that your friends had access to this amazing new foreign stuff, you might risk watching it too.
In the first few viewings, these simple South Korean soaps can be revelatory: The PDA, the attitudes of the female characters, even the way they talk and dress. The love story in the Korean drama Winter Sonata, which is credited with starting the Korean Wave across Asia, is still remembered fondly by many North Korean refugees.
Similarly when My Sassy Girl was smuggled in many young women who watched it were driven to imitate not just Jeon Ji-hyun’s fashion and hairstyle, but also the confident and cool way in which her character treats her boyfriend. (And of course in the background of these films and dramas, North Korean viewers can’t help but notice that South Korea looks way richer than North Korea). These information changes are confounding economic changes in their effects on gender relations, as bottom-up marketization has raised the status of women as they play a key role in illegal and semi-legal entrepreneurial business activities.
Humans being humans, porn is also being smuggled into North Korea. And without getting too PG-13, it would be fair to assume that this also opens up and accelerates changes in behaviour between the sheets as well.
It’s worth noting that despite a big growth in flows of foreign media over the last 10 years it is still limited, and especially in the countryside and in the interior of the country away from the border with China, people have much less access (if at all). So there is huge regional variation in North Korea and dating culture will still be very traditional and conservative in the countryside, whilst changing rather quickly in Pyongyang and other major cities and border towns. In addition, young Pyongyangites also mostly have mobile phones now, meaning fewer nervous knocks on doors.
Because of the government’s ongoing restrictions on culture and extreme paranoia over foreign media, North Korea was late to the sexual revolution. But it is now happening, and it is no trivial matter. The emulation of dating culture learned through South Korean and other foreign media, particularly among young urban North Koreans, is contributing to increased sensitivity to foreign trends and a liberalization and modernization of culture and society from the bottom up. And in the long run, it’s this kind of social change that will help usher in a wider transformation and opening of North Korean society, to the benefit of the North Korean people and humanity as a whole.
--SOKEEL PARK - director of research and strategy
Meet Noel, Our Newest North Korean LiNK Staff Member!
History has been made!! We have hired our first full-time North Korean resettlement staffer! Noel Kim might look familiar and that’s because she was LiNK Advocacy Fellow and intern at our Seoul office! As our newest Program Coordinator in Seoul, she works side-by-side with newly resettled North Koreans as they overcome the challenges of starting over in a new society.
We recently sat down with Noel to learn more about her new job and her own experience coming to South Korea.
How is it been working at LiNK so far?
Work is fun! Every moment I feel like my job is meaningful so it doesn’t feel like work at all. I became a staffer after being an intern so the work is similar but with more responsibilities and opportunities.
Why did you want to work at LiNK?
I joined LiNK last year as an Advocacy Fellow. I witnessed what LiNK does for the North Korean people and it was inspirational. I am from North Korea and it’s my responsibility to help but when I came to South Korea, I didn’t do anything to support my fellow North Koreans. I was embarrassed about that so when I heard about LiNK I saw it as an opportunity to make a meaningful impact!
How do your own experiences as a resettled refugee help you when you’re with our North Korean friends?
I lived through the same experiences so I think they trust me from the get go. I try to comfort them and give them advice on educational opportunities, resettlement programs, and even fun things they can do now that they are free. I also tell them to travel around South Korea.
There’s a North Korean saying, "A walking fool is better than a sitting intellectual."
You have to go see and experience how society works for yourself. You have to go see what clothes people wear, how they talk, and where they go to hang out. I believe being curious helps people adjust to South Korean society much faster.
What are some of the challenges resettled refugees you work with are facing in South Korea?
Usually, the people I meet struggle a lot with their North Korean accents. When I came to South Korea, I was ashamed of my accent too. The moment you open your mouth people know you're from North Korea. It makes you feel different. But I always tell the North Koreans I meet that with time their accents will naturally fade and not to stress too much about it.Also, older people who want to learn a skill usually have doubts that they can achieve their dreams at their age. I don’t think age matters, so I encourage them not to think like that but I completely understand and empathize with their concerns and feelings.
You’re working with North Koreans who have just resettled in South Korea, what was one of the hardest challenges you faced when you resettled?
One of them was making choices. When I lived in North Korea, I was never free. But then I came to South Korea and had freedoms I had never had before. It sounds strange, but it was not easy having so much freedom. For example, choosing your college major or your dream for your life was a new challenge. There were too many choices. I didn’t know what I should do or what I should choose. I recently read the book Escape from Freedom and as I read it, it hit me – I was running away from freedom.
It was so good to have freedom, but because I never had it before, I didn’t know what to do with it. Now that I have the freedom to do what I want, I'm working on doing something great with it.
What has been your favorite moment while working at LiNK?
It was a few months ago. The South Korea office had a karaoke gathering with LiNK’s board members and a lot of our North Korean friends. We just hung out and sang a lot of songs. That was one of my favorite memories because I was the emcee! I got to dance and I sang “Chingu” ( or “Friend”), a very old song I sang when I was younger.
It was my first time meeting so many North Koreans in one place in South Korea. I thought,“This is amazing that we are all together. It’s so much easier to be happy when we are together.”
What are your future plans or goals?
I am going to continue writing. I want to finish writing a book by the time I’m 30. I don’t care if it’ll ever be published. I just want to do it. And even if it seems far in the future, when North Korea opens, I want to return. I want to do whatever I can for the North Korean people. My work now at LiNK is preparing me for the day North Korea finally opens.
Want to to learn more about our resettlement work? Check it out here!
